Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and that's the
Speaker 1: podcast that they call Stuff You Should Know. Big sound
Speaker 1: any different? You sound exactly the same? Do I Really?
Speaker 1: That's good because I just got the stints out from
Speaker 1: having my deviated septoms fixed once and for all. Dude,
Speaker 1: what's it like, what's the reveal? Well, the big reveal
Speaker 1: is that my voice didn't change, which is something I
Speaker 1: was actually really worried about. Yeah, yeah, because I mean, like, um,
Speaker 1: that's what I used as my job when I was like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, if I've got like my septum pressed all
Speaker 1: the way up against one side of my face, how
Speaker 1: does that make my voice sound, and what will it
Speaker 1: sound like with you know out that happening. But I
Speaker 1: can breathe through both nostrils for the first time in memory.
Speaker 1: I I literally can't remember the last time. I think
Speaker 1: I'm probably was sixth grade. Again. My friend saw me
Speaker 1: punched me in the face, and I'm almost positive that's
Speaker 1: that's the only thing I can come up with that
Speaker 1: would have deviated my septem But I've been in such
Speaker 1: a good mood since those stints got pulled out. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm just on air, dude. I love it. So
Speaker 1: happy to hear that. Thank you. I bet those stints
Speaker 1: being in there was not fun. No, it wasn't. In
Speaker 1: um My doctor guy named Capelle Segal was really really good,
Speaker 1: as was Alicia the p A too, and he said
Speaker 1: that he was I don't think he said it was
Speaker 1: the most deviated septum ever, but I'm just gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and say that's essentially what he was saying, that
Speaker 1: it was really really deviated septem and so he got
Speaker 1: it straight and everything's going bully right now. Did you
Speaker 1: shave any off any anywhere here and there? No, he said,
Speaker 1: you know that bump is still going to be there, right,
Speaker 1: We're not doing a rhino plastic And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've made peace with my nose is fine nose. So
Speaker 1: he's like, great, okay, I love it. I can't wait.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to breathe my breath into your nostrils
Speaker 1: and have you. I can't accept it for the first time. Here,
Speaker 1: do it now, and we'll see if I can smell
Speaker 1: it over the microphone. Mom, Yeah, that's nice, Chuck, it
Speaker 1: smells like seagulls. Uh, it's funny. People listening to this
Speaker 1: might be thinking, why did Chuck almost shout the word
Speaker 1: big at the beginning of this episode. Oh yeah, because
Speaker 1: I was going to say big, props and thanks to
Speaker 1: you for picking this subject. Okay, great, because I thought
Speaker 1: I thought it was endlessly fascinating and had so many
Speaker 1: potential little ten drils that weren't even in the great
Speaker 1: thing that Livia put together for us. Uh. It just
Speaker 1: it really got my brain kind of thinking about a
Speaker 1: lot of different ways that pair of personal space and
Speaker 1: how our brains are wired, and how that how many
Speaker 1: things that has impacted in will impact and can't impact.
Speaker 1: I loved it. Yeah, it is that's I mean, that's
Speaker 1: why I was like, we gotta do one on this.
Speaker 1: I don't remember how I stumbled across. I think I
Speaker 1: actually was like, I remember hearing that every human needs
Speaker 1: like one point seven meters square meters of personal space
Speaker 1: or something, or actual physical space, and I was like,
Speaker 1: is that true? And I went and looked it up
Speaker 1: and I stumbled upon pair of personal space, which is different.
Speaker 1: There's personal space, there's pair of personal space. And this
Speaker 1: this science even though we've been like kind of picking
Speaker 1: at the edges of it since the seventies. UM, it's
Speaker 1: still so new that we're not quite sure if we're
Speaker 1: talking about the same thing or these overlapping systems. But
Speaker 1: the upshot of a pair of personal space while we're
Speaker 1: talking about is the area around you that you can reach,
Speaker 1: like as far as your arm extends, and that if
Speaker 1: you stop and think about it, this is the way
Speaker 1: that we physically interact with the world. This is the
Speaker 1: space and it changes because we move around the world.
Speaker 1: We sit down, we stand up, we hands, we just
Speaker 1: we do stuff, so it moves with us. It's locked
Speaker 1: into our body, but it is it's the space where
Speaker 1: where we interface with reality essentially UM in any physical way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's UM. And by the way, Teaser, there are
Speaker 1: two other kinds of spaces that you didn't even mention
Speaker 1: that we're going to talk about. Okay, so just you know,
Speaker 1: put that under your lid. Let's smoke listening, audience. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's sort of related to what's called body schema, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about sort of the history and all this
Speaker 1: and all these cool studies, but body schema is just
Speaker 1: the understanding that we have of how we're built. Like
Speaker 1: you know, Uh, it's like if you put on one
Speaker 1: of those big sumo wrestling suits, you're gonna be knocking
Speaker 1: stuff over, like Nathan for you episode in a China
Speaker 1: in a China shop. Um, because you're your your brain
Speaker 1: is wired to be used to how big you are. Uh,
Speaker 1: Like when we squeeze through a sideways thing, like we know,
Speaker 1: like I've got to turn sideways when I get to
Speaker 1: this thing because I know how big I am and
Speaker 1: I know how wide I am, And like, you can't
Speaker 1: overstate the massive importance this had evolutionarily speaking, I think,
Speaker 1: because that relates to everything from along with pps pair
Speaker 1: of personal space, everything from like can I reach from
Speaker 1: this limb out to get that piece of fruit without
Speaker 1: falling and killing myself too? Can I use this club
Speaker 1: and we'll get into some really interesting stuff about extensions
Speaker 1: of your own space. Can I use this club to
Speaker 1: hit that guy before he gets to me? All of
Speaker 1: this stuff matter, Like even fruit flies have a version
Speaker 1: of body schema, which is can I make it from
Speaker 1: here to there? Essentially with my little fruit fly body?
Speaker 1: Can I get through that gap? Is it too small? Um?
Speaker 1: As that. Yeah, that reveals that body schema is a
Speaker 1: really really ancient um mechanism. It's a really ancient system
Speaker 1: among life, right that if you stop and think about it,
Speaker 1: anything that moves through the world probably has some form
Speaker 1: of body schema because otherwise they'd be running into stuff,
Speaker 1: they would be um, they wouldn't be able to feed themselves,
Speaker 1: they would miss the prey that they were running after. UM.
Speaker 1: It would like it's really basically impossible to overstate how
Speaker 1: constantly we use these this this um process, and how
Speaker 1: constant it's updated. And the most remarkable thing about it
Speaker 1: is we do all this without even giving it a thought.
Speaker 1: It just happens. And it's not just body schema we're
Speaker 1: talking about. And this is where we kind of get
Speaker 1: into um what I was talking about earlier that we're
Speaker 1: still not quite sure is is body scheme up part
Speaker 1: of it? Are we talking about body schema? We're just
Speaker 1: accidentally using a different a different term, Like that's where
Speaker 1: the field is right now, But like neurology has definitely
Speaker 1: taken up a pair of personal space and is investigating
Speaker 1: it with full gusto. So it probably won't be too
Speaker 1: terribly long before we understand it much more and have
Speaker 1: like a much more precise definition that all of the
Speaker 1: scientific community agrees on. Yeah, and you know that's basically
Speaker 1: where we're studying here and talking about today is neurology.
Speaker 1: Because it's very easy to say, well, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't squeeze through a certain area if it's too
Speaker 1: small for your body. But it's not instinct. It is
Speaker 1: neurons firing on an unconscious level that is telling you
Speaker 1: to do or to not attempt this thing. Basically, it's
Speaker 1: very cool. Yeah, and again it's it's a It's how
Speaker 1: we do just about everything with our bodies, like from dancing, um,
Speaker 1: playing sports, um, making a crewdriver, making love, um, what
Speaker 1: some people called doing it. Um. How if somebody shoots
Speaker 1: an arrow at your face and you catch the arrow
Speaker 1: right before it hits your face without even thinking about it.
Speaker 1: It's how we catch flies out of the air with chopsticks.
Speaker 1: Anything that we do physically moving has to do with this.
Speaker 1: And again it has to do with how incredibly advanced
Speaker 1: our brains are. That's what we're finding out. That's what
Speaker 1: this this whole thing reveals, is this thing that we've
Speaker 1: just taken for granted, we finally reached the point in
Speaker 1: our like understanding of the universe and us and how
Speaker 1: things work, um, sorry, how stuff works, um, that we're
Speaker 1: now investigating things that we've just totally taken for granted.
Speaker 1: And what we're finding is like, oh my god, our
Speaker 1: brains are so ridiculously powerful that it's this is just
Speaker 1: fun to even talk about. And that's why we're talking
Speaker 1: about it today. A couple of the first neurologists to
Speaker 1: sort of start poking around this, uh pair of personal
Speaker 1: space was in nineteen eleven, uh do name, Henry Head
Speaker 1: good name, as Libya points out, and Gordon Holmes put
Speaker 1: out a paper um that talked about body schema, and
Speaker 1: they were looking at it in terms of like people
Speaker 1: that had brain damage. They noticed that certain kinds of
Speaker 1: brain damage would render odd ways that they might position
Speaker 1: a limb, or that they might have a sensation and
Speaker 1: a limb or something like that. So that's how they
Speaker 1: kind of, uh started kind of launched the field of
Speaker 1: studying this body scheme of thing neurologically speaking. And they
Speaker 1: also and this is super cool, this is just one
Speaker 1: of like a million cool things. They're the first ones
Speaker 1: that came up with this idea that if if something
Speaker 1: is attached to your body in a way that it's
Speaker 1: moving with your body, then your brain accepts that neurologically
Speaker 1: and factors that in. So if you're wearing a tin
Speaker 1: gallon hat, uh, You're you're gonna duck a little more
Speaker 1: readily because you know you're wearing that hat unless you know,
Speaker 1: unless you're just really dense and you just keep knocking
Speaker 1: that hat off. But eventually you're not going to be
Speaker 1: a cartoon character and you're going to realize this large
Speaker 1: hat or this whatever I'm wearing. Like and I remember,
Speaker 1: I think I've talked about it before and college. One
Speaker 1: of the greatest h Halloween costumes ever saw in downtown
Speaker 1: Athens was Uh. I kind of knew him. His name
Speaker 1: was Blake, but he was Surface Area man one year
Speaker 1: and he just had these huge foam disks that he
Speaker 1: made a suit out of around his arms and legs
Speaker 1: in his body that he took up like, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe fifteen square feet and he would just walk around
Speaker 1: Athens bumping into things saying, I'm surface area man. But
Speaker 1: it's it sort of ties in with this and that. Uh.
Speaker 1: He went against the idea like neurologically speaking, he would
Speaker 1: have known he can't go into the bar and not
Speaker 1: knock people over. And I'm sure he did know this,
Speaker 1: it was part of the gag. But uh, if it's
Speaker 1: attached to you and moves with you, your brain factors
Speaker 1: at in. Yeah, Like if you stop and think about
Speaker 1: that for a second, your body schema, if you put
Speaker 1: a hat on your body schema enlarges and changes shape
Speaker 1: to include that hat. Now, that's astounding. That's an amazing
Speaker 1: thing that we just again don't even think about. So
Speaker 1: Head and Homes were the ones who were really first
Speaker 1: kind of bringing this up, like, hey, guys, we're taking
Speaker 1: some stuff for granted, we need to investigate this. And
Speaker 1: it was followed up in UM by W. R. Brain,
Speaker 1: another neurologists UM, and he said, hey, you know what
Speaker 1: we kind of think of space around us is like, um,
Speaker 1: you know this, the door is just three ft in
Speaker 1: front of me, or the ceiling is a six ft ceiling,
Speaker 1: And we think of it in Cartesian terms like things
Speaker 1: can be mapped out as if on a graph. And
Speaker 1: he said that's not actually how our brain encoades things.
Speaker 1: It encoades things much more simply basically what's in grasping
Speaker 1: distance and what's in walking distance. And he kind of
Speaker 1: prefigured all the way back in one this idea of
Speaker 1: pair of personal space grasping distance, and then other types
Speaker 1: of space. And it seems to be the case that
Speaker 1: that is kind of how our brain divides things. And
Speaker 1: it's not binary like that. It's not like a straight
Speaker 1: line like either it's in walking distance or it's in
Speaker 1: grasping distance. There's gradients of it. But he he was
Speaker 1: pretty smart for having come up with this kind of
Speaker 1: seeing things differently. Yeah, and there were there were a
Speaker 1: couple of philosophers. Uh, I'm sure many people have put
Speaker 1: this forward, but uh common Kline and Frederick they Vanimon
Speaker 1: uh kind of throw out that, Hey, I think this
Speaker 1: evolved originally out of self defense, and that makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. I think even though we're so far
Speaker 1: removed from took took In and our ancestors like that, Uh,
Speaker 1: I think many people still in a place where they
Speaker 1: maybe even not feel threatened, maybe even when they're sitting
Speaker 1: in their own living room. No, like all right, the
Speaker 1: fire pokers, you know, within grasping distance, just in case
Speaker 1: some and bust in that door. Yeah, Like I remember
Speaker 1: being a kid and like and I wasn't a paranoid
Speaker 1: worried kid at all, but I used to go into
Speaker 1: places and all, right, where's where's the defense weapon? Like
Speaker 1: in this room? What would I grab if some maybe
Speaker 1: I was a paranoid where he could Now, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was gonna say I walk into the room and be like,
Speaker 1: where's the cookies? I would think I could throw the
Speaker 1: cookie jar at someone's head? But I think that's the
Speaker 1: evolutionary sort of remnant still sticking around, which is like,
Speaker 1: what can I grasp to defend myself? And your brain
Speaker 1: is sort of wired that way. Uh, not only with us,
Speaker 1: but you know animals they found out kind of do
Speaker 1: the same thing, right, Yeah, and like that we that
Speaker 1: we would have taken this initial thing that's self defense.
Speaker 1: So there's a bubble of of like protection around us
Speaker 1: that when something starts to come into it, we're like, okay,
Speaker 1: alarms are going off. And that over time our brain
Speaker 1: was like, we can do a lot more with this.
Speaker 1: Let's figure out unique and novel ways, and that that
Speaker 1: eventually evolved into being able to grasp the hot poker.
Speaker 1: And they point out the two philosophers you mentioned that
Speaker 1: um it's not an adaptation. That's called an exaptation. And
Speaker 1: we talked about it in a Human Intelligence episode UM,
Speaker 1: where the ability to remember where you set your baby
Speaker 1: down on that rock eventually evolved into wayfinding, like our
Speaker 1: ability to create mental maps and find our way around
Speaker 1: or find our way back from something. But yeah, you
Speaker 1: said something about the animals, and there was a Swiss
Speaker 1: zoo director. I'm just gonna take his name. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: usually pretty generous, but I want to take this one. Okay,
Speaker 1: heine Headagar. It's pretty straightforward. It's a great name. Heinie Hedagar,
Speaker 1: Swiss Zoo director UM started studying animals because he wanted
Speaker 1: to figure out at what like, how can you put
Speaker 1: animals into the same enclosure but they're from different species
Speaker 1: without scaring one another to death? And so he started
Speaker 1: studying how close you could get the animals and came
Speaker 1: up with this whole um kind of con tribution to
Speaker 1: the eventual pair of personal understanding of space. That's right.
Speaker 1: So what happened was Heinie Hettegar. You gotta say both names.
Speaker 1: It's really hard not to, uh said. I want to
Speaker 1: figure out a few different things. I want to figure
Speaker 1: out um, how far like a predator species can be
Speaker 1: from a prey before uh, we'll call it the flight
Speaker 1: distance before one of the prey runs away or maybe
Speaker 1: fights back. We'll call that the defense distance or plays dead.
Speaker 1: That's critical distance. And found out that there was just
Speaker 1: a lot of consistency among different individuals within a species,
Speaker 1: which a was interesting, but also created the definition of
Speaker 1: what a tame animal is, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 1: Which is a flight distance of zero when it comes
Speaker 1: to humans. So you can go up and pet, pet
Speaker 1: that thing, basically give it a scritch again, and and
Speaker 1: heinie hettagar um. You can kind of take him and
Speaker 1: set him to the side for a little bit. Because
Speaker 1: his findings really kind of come to pass in proxemics,
Speaker 1: which is the personal spaces most people understand it um,
Speaker 1: which eventually, you know, we'll talk about overlaps with pair
Speaker 1: of personal space, but but pair of personal spaces we
Speaker 1: understand it today was termed I think around and there's
Speaker 1: gonna be a lot of Chuck's Italian imitations because the Italians,
Speaker 1: really they did a lot of studying of para personal space.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know, but they just they
Speaker 1: just are into that kind of thing. But from the
Speaker 1: seventies to the nineties there was a lot of sad
Speaker 1: monkey experiments. Um so said, I'm like, when are we
Speaker 1: going to stop doing that? We have to figure out
Speaker 1: a different way because it's just so ghastly if you
Speaker 1: stop and think about what they're doing through these poor monkeys. Um.
Speaker 1: But essentially what they figured out is, yeah, w R
Speaker 1: brain was right. Our brains basically say that's near, that's far,
Speaker 1: And yes, there's you know, variations on the theme, but
Speaker 1: essentially that's how we see the world. And the stuff
Speaker 1: that's near is the really hot action stuff because that's
Speaker 1: the stuff we can interact with. Right. But also there
Speaker 1: was an Italian UH neuro physiologist name do you say
Speaker 1: Giacomo or Jacomo? Oh? I don't know, I'm gonna say Giacomo, Okay,
Speaker 1: Giacomo riz A Latti um basically found out that as
Speaker 1: far as the neurons of this macaque monkey goes, and
Speaker 1: as sensibly humans obviously that's why they're studying these monkeys
Speaker 1: to begin with, uh, their neurons would fire if the
Speaker 1: monkey was touched, like literally touched on the skin, or
Speaker 1: the same thing would happen if a flash of light
Speaker 1: went off near its body. So it you know, we're
Speaker 1: talking about pair of personal space versus extra personal space.
Speaker 1: That was one of the two types that we didn't
Speaker 1: mention extra personalist out of your reach grasp, right, yes,
Speaker 1: So basically found out that certain neurons react to that
Speaker 1: extra personal space exclusively visually. But when it came to
Speaker 1: these pair of personal neurons, they were responding to both
Speaker 1: tactile or visual stimulus in the same way. Right, So
Speaker 1: as long as something was happening in this in this
Speaker 1: pair of personal space, that neuron could be stimulated by
Speaker 1: different kinds of input. Right. That's right, That's that's kinda
Speaker 1: that's gonna become big in a second. Um. There's another
Speaker 1: researcher named Michael Graziano, Chuck Graziana. Actually he's Americans, all bet,
Speaker 1: it's just Michael Graziano. UM. And he studied macaques too
Speaker 1: with electrical currents, and this one, this is the one
Speaker 1: that gets me. He implanted electrodes into these neurons that
Speaker 1: m Risolotti had discovered, UM, and said, what happens if
Speaker 1: I like stimulate this, And when he stimulated the neurons
Speaker 1: that were activated within the peri personal space, the monkeys
Speaker 1: would like flinch, they would like throw their hands up
Speaker 1: defensively in front of their faces. Um, they would they
Speaker 1: would respond like there was a predator that was about
Speaker 1: to attack them, like it had just invaded their pair
Speaker 1: of personal space, or as Henny Heideger would say, their
Speaker 1: um defense distance, right, yeah, which I mean that leads
Speaker 1: to the you know, that really backs up the whole
Speaker 1: original defense mechanism thing right exactly. Um that that that's
Speaker 1: probably what it evolved from. And then when he did
Speaker 1: the opposite, if he if he prevented those neurons for firing,
Speaker 1: he could get as close as you wanted and the
Speaker 1: monkey wouldn't flinch, essentially all right. And then nineties seven
Speaker 1: rise a lotty. I believe this is where the first
Speaker 1: sort of big book around this came out. He and
Speaker 1: his colleagues put out a book called The Space Around Us,
Speaker 1: where they basically gathered up, you know, a couple of
Speaker 1: decades worth of research and said here's what we've got
Speaker 1: so far. Right. One of the big things that they
Speaker 1: said in that was that, hey, what we thought before
Speaker 1: is that there's all this different sensories information coming in
Speaker 1: tactile information audio, visual, all that stuff, and the brain
Speaker 1: is kind of bringing it all together and analyzing it
Speaker 1: and then telling the motor nerves what to do to respond.
Speaker 1: That's not right. It turns out that there are neurons
Speaker 1: that can be stimulated by by visual input, by tactile input,
Speaker 1: by audio input, the same neuron it will respond. The
Speaker 1: point isn't what kind of stimulus it is, it's where
Speaker 1: it's happening. So like, if something's happening in the pair
Speaker 1: of personal space, a neuron that's responsible for the pair
Speaker 1: of personal space around your right elbow, if you see
Speaker 1: something around your right elbow coming at it, like an arrow,
Speaker 1: or if an arrow is actually touching now your elbow,
Speaker 1: that same neuron is going to fire in just the
Speaker 1: same way. Um. That that was a big thing. It's
Speaker 1: not stimulus specific, it's location specific. And so that kind
Speaker 1: of changed our entire understanding of how the brain kind
Speaker 1: of processes all this stuff. It's it's um Rather than
Speaker 1: redundancy having all these different regions taking in stuff and
Speaker 1: then I put it together, it's you know, specific neurons
Speaker 1: are are dedicated to specific regions no matter how that
Speaker 1: that sensory input is coming in well, and even in
Speaker 1: the cool little Cherry on this Sunday was they also
Speaker 1: found out that it's not just where something is located,
Speaker 1: but their neurons start firing on, you know, if it's
Speaker 1: a bow and arrow or a rake, or a club
Speaker 1: or a baseball bat or a coffee cup. Your your
Speaker 1: brains fires on like how you're going to physically engage
Speaker 1: with that thing because of its locate, you know, and
Speaker 1: and coordination with its physical location. So that comes up
Speaker 1: a little bit later at the end with the mirror
Speaker 1: neurons experiment. Uh, and maybe we'll just say that that
Speaker 1: will be a nice little teaser, Okay. Cool. Another thing
Speaker 1: that they figured out to um, I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: the year was, but Andreas Areno at the MySpace Lab
Speaker 1: pretty great name. Um. She found out that the size
Speaker 1: of your PPS varies depending on what part of the
Speaker 1: body is being studied. So, um, it's different sizes around
Speaker 1: that your torso or your face or your hands. And
Speaker 1: what I found just monumentally astounding, Chuck, is that the
Speaker 1: size of your PPS altars size and shape. I believe
Speaker 1: as you bring one PPS area into another PPS area,
Speaker 1: so like your face comes up or your hand comes
Speaker 1: to touch your face, and they think that this is
Speaker 1: to prevent your hand from getting captured by your PPS,
Speaker 1: your faces pair of personal space, and then who knows
Speaker 1: what sort of crazy cognitive sensation that would create. So
Speaker 1: you actually there's a mechanism to prevent that from happening,
Speaker 1: to prevent your hands PPS from merging accidentally with your
Speaker 1: faces PPS. Right. But one thing that they kind of
Speaker 1: got wrong that they realized later on, and I think, Uh,
Speaker 1: this paper came out just a few years ago. In
Speaker 1: was that Uh, And I believe let's shout out who
Speaker 1: it was researchers Rory Uh, Buffacci, Man, what is going
Speaker 1: on here? I love it? Rory doesn't doesn't make you do?
Speaker 1: You're not expecting Buffon, Rory J. Buffacci and gian Domenico Ionetti. Um.
Speaker 1: They put forth the argument that it's like, it's not
Speaker 1: like a switch though it's a it's a sort of
Speaker 1: like a a gradient range basically based on the distance
Speaker 1: something is from you. So it's not like is it
Speaker 1: within my grasping distance or is it not? Neurons can
Speaker 1: fire if it like it might be like if they
Speaker 1: move something a little bit closer, the way your neurons
Speaker 1: fire change. Yeah, They've also found that it depends on
Speaker 1: if the thing is moving or if it's stationary, and
Speaker 1: if it's moving, isn't moving towards you as am moving away?
Speaker 1: Like there are a lot of nuance to it, rather
Speaker 1: than it's either in my extra personal space or it's
Speaker 1: in my pair of personal space, which was kind of
Speaker 1: like the the general model for years or finding like, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's much more nuanced than that. Um So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I we just realized off camera, off Mike, we have
Speaker 1: not we haven't taken a break yet. Now. See this
Speaker 1: is so fascinating. It's like we're having a good old
Speaker 1: fashioned conversation. Okay, well, let's let's take that break now
Speaker 1: then and come back. Okay, yeah, like people do in
Speaker 1: good old fashioned conversations. All right, so we're back. Uh.
Speaker 1: I know everyone else takes add breaks when they have
Speaker 1: great conversations with people. So that's what we did. Sure,
Speaker 1: Uh where are we now? We are? We had tools?
Speaker 1: Can we talk about tools? Yeah? This is where it
Speaker 1: really starts to get mind blowing. Yeah, this is super
Speaker 1: cool because not only does your pair of personal space
Speaker 1: change automatically if you wear a tin gallon hat, but
Speaker 1: your pair of personal space will change according to what
Speaker 1: kind of tool you're using. Yeah, and this is sort
Speaker 1: of what I was talking about with Took. Took all
Speaker 1: of a sudden has a as a four ft club
Speaker 1: in his hand, and he now knows that that uh,
Speaker 1: that animal he wants to kill or that person coming
Speaker 1: at him, that the neurons are firing basically as if
Speaker 1: his arm is three and a half feet longer. Yes,
Speaker 1: it includes that. And this I think is just like
Speaker 1: if you just think about the development of weapons over
Speaker 1: the years, you and weapons, I think, well, I mean
Speaker 1: some of this stuff was actually in our book on
Speaker 1: the chapter on the first gun, but it really I
Speaker 1: don't know, it never occurred to me that all weapons
Speaker 1: development since the beginning of time has just been to
Speaker 1: get further and further away from your enemy. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Like you have a club that
Speaker 1: you can hit some with or a sword, and then
Speaker 1: you're backing up a little bit more and your pair
Speaker 1: of personal space is automatically reading this in. But I'm
Speaker 1: curious about like when you start shooting arrows and then
Speaker 1: guns and then eventually long range missiles, like neurologically speaking,
Speaker 1: what that does you know? Right? Um? But also with tools,
Speaker 1: not just weapons, but any like the fact that you
Speaker 1: can use a screwdriver, um or hit a baseball with
Speaker 1: a bat. It's not about sometimes I'm like co on,
Speaker 1: let's chill out, Chuck, let's get a more Richard scary
Speaker 1: than actually scary. Um. So. Uh. The fact that you
Speaker 1: can use a screwdriver is not because your hand is
Speaker 1: pres cisely guiding that screwdriver. It seems to be because
Speaker 1: the pair of personal space of your hand is now
Speaker 1: being extended to the tip of that screwdriver. So it's
Speaker 1: almost like if you could turn screws with your finger.
Speaker 1: You're doing something very similar as far as your neurons
Speaker 1: are concerned, because they've now adopted the screwdriver as part
Speaker 1: of your hand and extended your pair of personal space
Speaker 1: around it. So your body schema has now adjusted and
Speaker 1: you look like you have an extra finger that's really
Speaker 1: thin and really long. Uh. There's a really cool study
Speaker 1: again in Italy. Uh in two thousand, uh Anna Berti
Speaker 1: and Francisa Fressinetti looked at a woman who had a
Speaker 1: stroke on the right hemisphere of her brain and they
Speaker 1: did these experiments to you know, these near and far
Speaker 1: space experiments to see how her neurons fired when like
Speaker 1: reaching for something with a hand or reaching for something
Speaker 1: not really reaching, but using a laser pointer to you know,
Speaker 1: extend your extra personal space really far out there. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I believe when she was asked to find the
Speaker 1: midpoint of a line within her pair of personal space,
Speaker 1: like with her finger, maybe she put the mark really
Speaker 1: far to the right because the right hemisphere of her
Speaker 1: brain had been damaged through the stroke. She was asked
Speaker 1: to do the same thing with this laser and she
Speaker 1: did a really much better job. And then they gave
Speaker 1: her a stick, And I believe that she used the
Speaker 1: stick and did uh, worse than the laser, right, but
Speaker 1: better than her finger. Yeah, because her brain didn't adopt
Speaker 1: the laser dot as part of her body schema, but
Speaker 1: it did adopt the stick, so constantly remapping basically. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But it also showed that the brain treats these two
Speaker 1: places very much differently that they're they're they're not the
Speaker 1: same as far as the brain is concerned. And it
Speaker 1: also showed that when you use a stick over a
Speaker 1: laser point in your brain is treating that stick like
Speaker 1: a tool. It was just really good early evidence that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we definitely change our body scheme and to adopt tools
Speaker 1: when we use them. Yeah, and it sort of made
Speaker 1: me think about along with this next study, this was
Speaker 1: UM not in Italy actually, this is in Japan around
Speaker 1: two thousand, where they took monkeys again and they gave
Speaker 1: them rakes, uh to see if they would treat a
Speaker 1: rake like an extension of their body neurologically speaking, and
Speaker 1: they did. They could get food that was you know,
Speaker 1: further away just using that rake, but they also were
Speaker 1: able to use a video monitor. These monkeys would to
Speaker 1: see an area where there would be food that they
Speaker 1: couldn't see without looking at the video monitor, and they
Speaker 1: looked at this monitor basically to see where this food
Speaker 1: was hidden. And they still use this rake as an extension.
Speaker 1: Like it made me think of sort of like a
Speaker 1: surgeon using robotics basically the same thing must be happening
Speaker 1: in their brain when they're looking at a video screen
Speaker 1: and operating an extension of their you know, scalpel. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think more more recent tests UM using virtual reality
Speaker 1: headsets have found like that. Yeah, you like, that's exactly
Speaker 1: what's going on your You can adopt something on a
Speaker 1: video screen your brain can and be like this is
Speaker 1: what this is part of my body schema for the moment.
Speaker 1: And what I thought was even more interesting, or at
Speaker 1: least as interesting, is that the same researchers found that, um,
Speaker 1: when the monkeys were just holding the rake, their their
Speaker 1: pair of personal space just shrunk back down to normal.
Speaker 1: But when they were yes and if they were using
Speaker 1: as a tool, then the pair of personal space extended
Speaker 1: around it. So it has to do with like what
Speaker 1: I can't remember. One of the researchers was saying, like,
Speaker 1: we interact with the world and objects, and we retreat
Speaker 1: objects based on what we can or can't or plan
Speaker 1: to do with those things when we interact with them
Speaker 1: in pair of personal space. And all of that, by
Speaker 1: the way, was in Japanese researchers at Sushi Riki's lab
Speaker 1: with an Italian flare. It's got to be for this episode.
Speaker 1: The same thing happens. Like when you're in a car,
Speaker 1: if you're driving a small car as opposed to driving
Speaker 1: like a big box truck, your your neurons are gonna
Speaker 1: fire differently because you know, you know, you're constantly trying
Speaker 1: to figure out if you can squeeze in through a
Speaker 1: space with a larger vehicle. Dude, the very fact that
Speaker 1: we can drive a car is because of a pair
Speaker 1: of personal space. Can you imagine like we could conceivably
Speaker 1: still drive, um it just knowing like if I turned
Speaker 1: the wheel this way or turn them um, But it
Speaker 1: would be the most harrowing experience. No one would drive.
Speaker 1: It would be so scary to drive because we we
Speaker 1: the reason why it's not as scary as we have.
Speaker 1: We've extended our pair of personal space to our car. Now.
Speaker 1: It's nuts what our brains are willing to do when
Speaker 1: we throw technology at them. Well, and you know I've
Speaker 1: mentioned before when I drove in Australia opposite z steering wheel,
Speaker 1: opposite side of the road, I had to really concentrate,
Speaker 1: very very hard because you were so wired to just
Speaker 1: being in a car and driving and making turns in
Speaker 1: a certain way. Uh. It really shook shook me up.
Speaker 1: And I think stimulated. Uh I say stimulated me And
Speaker 1: it sounds dirty all of a sudden, I'm driving around
Speaker 1: Australia in a in an excited state, but that was
Speaker 1: but it stimulated my brain. I just felt more. I
Speaker 1: felt so alive. Yeah with you, Yeah, because you zone
Speaker 1: out so easily when you drive. Sometimes when you're just
Speaker 1: taking off for granted driven that yeah, it is dangerous. Um.
Speaker 1: There was one other thing I saw that I thought
Speaker 1: was just astounding about this. Um. It seems that your
Speaker 1: pair of personal space can basically merge with another person's
Speaker 1: under certain conditions to where you're doing, um, synchronized motions
Speaker 1: and movements that require coming into contact with one another,
Speaker 1: like synchronoz swimming. Let's say no, no, because you're not
Speaker 1: actually touching. This would be more like a bucket brigade,
Speaker 1: or if you're doing a baton run and you're handing
Speaker 1: off a baton at that moment when the baton is
Speaker 1: being passed, that it's being manipulated. It's a part of
Speaker 1: two different people's pair of personal space at the same time,
Speaker 1: so you are connected to that person via a pair
Speaker 1: of personal space through the baton. Are you do people
Speaker 1: touch in senor nice swimming? I don't think I think
Speaker 1: you get disqualified for that. It's frowned on. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I thought you're saying they did touch. No, no, I'm
Speaker 1: saying not not synchronized swimming because they don't touch. Okay,
Speaker 1: Oh man, I'm just confused now. Do they touch or not.
Speaker 1: They do not talk. They just swim around near each
Speaker 1: other in the same pattern. Right. Although I have a
Speaker 1: great story, Um, it's not synchronized swimming. But I was
Speaker 1: on a swimming team when I was a younger kid,
Speaker 1: and I was terrible, terrible. I now realized that the
Speaker 1: coaches put me in just for fun, just just to
Speaker 1: get their their kicks watching me swim terribly. And um,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why I know that is because
Speaker 1: they put me in a backstroke and I was the
Speaker 1: worst backstroke swimmer ever. Um, because I would cross at
Speaker 1: least one lane if not to and bump into another
Speaker 1: swimmer and we'd both be so surprised we'd stop and
Speaker 1: stand up, and I would accidentally disqualify both of us
Speaker 1: because if you stand up in the pool, if your
Speaker 1: feet touch the bottom, you're disqualified. So that was in
Speaker 1: that case. It wasn't synchronized swimming, but we were touching.
Speaker 1: Young Josh being like, why would anyone swim backwards so
Speaker 1: dumb you can't see anything. Just let me do the breaststroke.
Speaker 1: I can do that. Or you developed the first backstroke
Speaker 1: rear view mirror that just like sits on your chest Uh,
Speaker 1: so maybe we should talk a little bit about some
Speaker 1: of the other cool findings, like uh they have found that, um,
Speaker 1: it's not just tools, but like anxiety and your mood
Speaker 1: can change your pair of personal space whether or not
Speaker 1: you're interacting with someone from a different culture can uh.
Speaker 1: They have found that, you know, if if you're interacting
Speaker 1: with someone from a different culture, generally, UM you might
Speaker 1: not feel as comfortable with them being close to you
Speaker 1: as you would someone from your own culture, which explains
Speaker 1: a lot. It definitely does. UM. They also found that
Speaker 1: spinal injuries can reduce the size of the um pps
Speaker 1: if the person is lost the ability to control their
Speaker 1: limb um and they you can actually simulate this if
Speaker 1: you have ten hours to kill UM. You can just
Speaker 1: keep your leg immobilized for ten hours and it will
Speaker 1: temporarily shrink your personal space around your leg because your
Speaker 1: brain is basically like, oh, I guess that legs not
Speaker 1: in use any longer. Yeah, well, if you're pregnant, you're
Speaker 1: gonna grow that PPS because all of a sudden you
Speaker 1: have a a basketball under your shirt. So it's you know,
Speaker 1: people think that was obviously probably in a luctionary um
Speaker 1: protection measure to protect that baby in the belly. People
Speaker 1: take a wider berth around people they deem important or
Speaker 1: high status or celebrity or famous or whatever. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it's not them saying, hey, I need space. It's it's
Speaker 1: you regarding their status and instinctively not going as close
Speaker 1: to them. No, that's true, but you're increasing your space. Um,
Speaker 1: because you're I guess, kind of anxious around them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very interesting. Um, one that I saw that explains
Speaker 1: a lot. I hadn't really thought about it. Um, it's claustrophobia.
Speaker 1: People who have claustrophobia have bigger pair of personal spaces.
Speaker 1: So it's like, if you're stuffed into a like a
Speaker 1: I don't know, drainage culvert or something that's narrower than
Speaker 1: your pair of personal spaces by a lot, you could
Speaker 1: have claustrophobia. I think that's fascinating. Or I'll give you
Speaker 1: a different example. If you're kidnapped and put into a
Speaker 1: coffin and buried alive, you may feel claustrophobic because your
Speaker 1: pair of personal spaces being violated. We uh got pivoted
Speaker 1: away from Florida because of the hurricane for fall break,
Speaker 1: and so we went to last minute trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: And this sort of stuff is all in play if
Speaker 1: you're doing Rock City and Ruby Falls, because in Ruby
Speaker 1: Falls you're either ducking or avoiding things, or in Rock
Speaker 1: City there are quite a few places where you're squeezing
Speaker 1: through tight areas, uh and also ducking. So I wish
Speaker 1: i'd I mean, it's not like I was running into
Speaker 1: things because I have my neurons are working fine. But um,
Speaker 1: if you have claustrophobia, imagine you have a hard time
Speaker 1: with places like that, or any sort of neurological condition
Speaker 1: that affects your PPS, than those places are not gonna
Speaker 1: be great for you. Yeah, we had a good talk, man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say there aren't that many roadside attractions
Speaker 1: from the thirties that still hold up to day, but
Speaker 1: those two definitely do. Both very cool. Um, Chuck, I
Speaker 1: say that we take a break and come back and
Speaker 1: talk about personal space as most people understand it. How
Speaker 1: about that let's do it so like I was saying
Speaker 1: personal spaces as most people think of it, as like, Um,
Speaker 1: you're making me a little nervous, you're a little close
Speaker 1: talking to me or whatever. Who wasn't judge Reinhold the
Speaker 1: close talker and signfld um. That's called prox semics, and
Speaker 1: that got its name from an anthropologist, actually, a guy
Speaker 1: named Edward Hall back in ninety six. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if he adapted Heinie heddagers um distances that he
Speaker 1: came up with for animals or if it was just
Speaker 1: like he made the same observations and came up with
Speaker 1: different labels, but he basically replicated headagers thing for the
Speaker 1: swing in sixties instead. Yeah, and you know, when it
Speaker 1: comes to proximics in personal space, obviously all of this
Speaker 1: depends on who it is. Like they don't do studies
Speaker 1: on like if your if your boyfriend or girlfriend walks
Speaker 1: into the room, like you know, all those rules are
Speaker 1: kind of thrown out the window. They're talking about like,
Speaker 1: you know, strangers who don't know each other generally. And
Speaker 1: the way they might research this is having a participant
Speaker 1: like stand there and have a um, you know, control
Speaker 1: walk into the room and say, hey, you just tell
Speaker 1: me when to stop, like right when you start feeling
Speaker 1: uncomfortable to how close I am, tell me when to stop,
Speaker 1: shout stop stop, Which this is gonna very wildly among people,
Speaker 1: I think, uh in general, but I think they did
Speaker 1: find some commonalities among cultures when it comes to comfort distances. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're they're like I said, some people are gonna have
Speaker 1: their own uh uh like really good reasons, personal hang ups. Uh,
Speaker 1: some people have neurological conditions that are gonna kind of
Speaker 1: factor in. But if you're just generally talking about a
Speaker 1: person and a culture, they have found that. Weirdly, I
Speaker 1: was surprised that Americans are about average with um, what
Speaker 1: do they call it, like average physical proximity. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: We're we're a little more than average ly comfortable with
Speaker 1: that kind of that. Just it feels like Americans are
Speaker 1: more prone than other cultures to be like, hey, like
Speaker 1: do you mind backing off a little bit? Yeah, But
Speaker 1: it makes sense. And there was a guy um who
Speaker 1: suggested I think it actually might have been Edward Hall
Speaker 1: who suggested that, um, different cities in different countries are
Speaker 1: laid out differently based on the personal space that that
Speaker 1: culture has, And it would make sense. In America, we're
Speaker 1: all about wide open spaces and don't fence me in
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. So I could totally see that
Speaker 1: being you know, American compared to like a European city
Speaker 1: where buildings are just built on top of buildings. There's
Speaker 1: little narrow alleyways that lead to charming bookshops and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. I I could see that totally based on
Speaker 1: personal space, that that culture values without anyone having any
Speaker 1: idea that's what's doing. Yeah, And I had to you know,
Speaker 1: I value my personal space and I had when I
Speaker 1: lived in l A. I had to reckon with um
Speaker 1: realizing that like, hey, in a town like Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: a melting pot like that, people are coming from all
Speaker 1: over the world and you're gonna be shopping, uh in
Speaker 1: close proximity to them and rubbing elbows and there lived
Speaker 1: experienced wherever they came from. It's different than your bub
Speaker 1: and so like you can't you know, if if someone
Speaker 1: grew up in India and uh, like I'm trying to
Speaker 1: picture like a really crowded bazare or something where people
Speaker 1: are like packed in and trying to order things like,
Speaker 1: that's a whole different experience than growing up in the
Speaker 1: Southeast in a in a big, huge grocery store. And
Speaker 1: so if someone creeps up on you a little bit,
Speaker 1: you gotta keep that in mind as an American, and
Speaker 1: I can see you laying there thinking that with your
Speaker 1: elbows out to the side, your hands behind your head,
Speaker 1: and then your brain says, Okay, now get up and
Speaker 1: go squeeze some orange shoes because it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: beautiful day. I did have a little bit of I
Speaker 1: try to be understanding, but I got a little salty
Speaker 1: a couple of times in chatt a new personal space
Speaker 1: really well. But the little statue elves my personal philosophy
Speaker 1: is is if I can't like reach behind myself and
Speaker 1: get like my wallet out of my pocket without elbowing someone, sure,
Speaker 1: that's way too close. Then you're too close. Especially in
Speaker 1: these days, that person is used an r F I
Speaker 1: D skimmer on you if they're that close to your wallet.
Speaker 1: Also had a kid behind me that was doing that,
Speaker 1: like let's let's kick the guy's feet when he walks
Speaker 1: and laugh about it with his brother, and I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, they were kicking your feet. Yeah, yeah, one
Speaker 1: of the kids was kicking his feet and I heard
Speaker 1: him laughing to his brother and I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: just stay cool, chuck. This is a kid. Your kid
Speaker 1: annoys people too. And then the mom I didn't even
Speaker 1: have to like give a dirty look. The mom was
Speaker 1: on it and was like, you need to back off
Speaker 1: of that guy, and I was like, oh, it's fine,
Speaker 1: but yeah, right, Oh, I hadn't even noticed anyway, A
Speaker 1: long way of saying that people come from different cultures
Speaker 1: where they have different levels of comfort with what Edward
Speaker 1: Hall called um intimate distance, which is hugging which is great,
Speaker 1: or whispering in someone's ear, which is the worst possible thing,
Speaker 1: putting your tongue in someone's here, Uh, that could be nice.
Speaker 1: Um personal distance, which is comfortable with close friends but
Speaker 1: not acquaintances. Social distance, which is like the water cooler
Speaker 1: chat six ft, yes, six ft, or what they call
Speaker 1: public distance, what he called public distance, and that's I
Speaker 1: guess when you're like on a stage projecting and guesturing
Speaker 1: largely and stuff like that. Yes, And it really does
Speaker 1: remarkably resemble Heinie Hettagar's um separation of zones for for
Speaker 1: animals species and that makes sense because we're still animals too,
Speaker 1: And so it seems like what the differences between personal
Speaker 1: space and para personal space and physically they overlap a lot,
Speaker 1: is that And this is just me editorializing, but I
Speaker 1: think personal space is that original defensive zone that evolved
Speaker 1: that animals have that Heinie Hettagar turned up, um, that
Speaker 1: we still have again because we're animals, and that para
Speaker 1: personal space is that acceptation that came out of that
Speaker 1: personal space defensive zone and and that allows us to
Speaker 1: interact with the environment and all sorts of new and
Speaker 1: amazing and interesting ways. Yeah. I like that. Physically they
Speaker 1: occupy the same space, but mentally, um, neurologically they're they're distinct. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Super fascinating. Uh, I guess we can finish up on
Speaker 1: the return of mirror neurons. Yeah, totally very excited. I
Speaker 1: feel like we used to talk about mirror neurons a lot,
Speaker 1: but we had I believe, a complete episode on them, right,
Speaker 1: and then talked about them a lot. But it's sort
Speaker 1: of the idea and this is a reductive way of
Speaker 1: looking at it, But like seeing a football player break
Speaker 1: their leg on the TV screen might send a weird
Speaker 1: pain sensation through your own leg or but it's the
Speaker 1: opposite side, and that what they figured out. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but who was it? Willis mcgahey, Uh,
Speaker 1: the Miami Hurricane guy who's knee all the way backwards.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. I was thinking thisman, there's been
Speaker 1: so many bad sort of incidences over the year, But
Speaker 1: this is the idea that you're these are mirror neurons
Speaker 1: and they're picking up what has happened to someone else
Speaker 1: and like literally physically affecting you in your body. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons that this would relate to
Speaker 1: pair of personal spaces, they think that mirror neurons help
Speaker 1: us basically create a mental construct of what we're going
Speaker 1: to do with our body with our hands by watching
Speaker 1: someone else doing it. And they say, well, this is
Speaker 1: obviously how like stone toolmaking was passed down from generation
Speaker 1: to generation because we had the ability to watch someone
Speaker 1: else do something and then do it ourselves because of
Speaker 1: this body schema and um mirror neurons, which are probably
Speaker 1: very much inter related to the point where mirror neurons
Speaker 1: and the pair of personal space or body schema neurons
Speaker 1: are one and the same in some cases. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: they did a study again with the monkeys. Uh, and
Speaker 1: this had to do with kind of what I mentioned
Speaker 1: at the beginning about whether or not you're going to
Speaker 1: interact with something, where they watched monkeys watching a human
Speaker 1: grab an object. So the monkeys just watching a person like,
Speaker 1: let's they grab an apple, and about a quarter of
Speaker 1: the mirror neurons and these monkeys fired more rapidly if
Speaker 1: the person grabbing the apple was just simply closer to
Speaker 1: the monkey. So, in other words, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the monkey says, all right, I might have be interacting
Speaker 1: with this thing. So different neurons are lighting up. And
Speaker 1: when they put up a barrier, and it was a
Speaker 1: clear barrier, this is what confused me a little bit.
Speaker 1: They put up a clear barrier between the person and
Speaker 1: the monkey, and it actually did reduce those neurons lighting
Speaker 1: up just because there was a barrier there. But it
Speaker 1: was was the monkey, I guess aware of the barrier.
Speaker 1: It had to be yeah, okay, yeah, but it could
Speaker 1: still see what they was doing. But it had shut
Speaker 1: down the possibility to the monkey's brain that it would
Speaker 1: be interacting with the apple. So a different, a different
Speaker 1: experience happened in the monkey's brain because it wasn't trying
Speaker 1: to interact with it wasn't going to interact with the apple.
Speaker 1: Super cool, very cool, me too, man, pair of personal space.
Speaker 1: I'm glad we did one on it. Um, you got
Speaker 1: anything else right now? No, just if you see me out,
Speaker 1: give me a little room. Yeah, for sure. Don't kick
Speaker 1: Chuck's feet. It's weird though, because I do like a
Speaker 1: good hug, but like someone whispering to me, and I
Speaker 1: think I have like childhood triggers for that for certain
Speaker 1: reasons I won't get into. But like anybody whispering and
Speaker 1: my daughter whispering in my ear, I just can't handle.
Speaker 1: I cannot handle a whisper in my ear. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I knew that. Man. Well, I don't mind your whisper.
Speaker 1: You're kind of the only one. Okay, how's gonna say?
Speaker 1: I feel like the sweet Nothings really do it for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that Harvey's bombing episode was so good. Job. See, I
Speaker 1: don't mind hearing a whisper. It's got to be in
Speaker 1: my ear. Yeah, I understand that. I mean probably because
Speaker 1: it's not just um audio, it's tactile to the air
Speaker 1: pushing on your ear drum. Because I don't think we
Speaker 1: mentioned the final fourth type of space. Uh what was
Speaker 1: it called? That? Just something close to your skin paracutaneous
Speaker 1: paracutaneous space, Yes, where that sets off a whole different
Speaker 1: set of neurons. They think too. That's kind of like
Speaker 1: the new leading edge of this um and that reminds me, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I cannot find this essay to save my life. But
Speaker 1: it was by a philosopher, and he was basically saying, like,
Speaker 1: where do you and and the rest of the world begin,
Speaker 1: And obviously most people say your skin, but then he
Speaker 1: pointed out that there's molecular exchange. There's gas exchange through
Speaker 1: your skin, so at a point where like a air
Speaker 1: molecules moving into your body through your skin, Like, is
Speaker 1: there really any true barrier between you and the outside world.
Speaker 1: It just jogged my memory when when they were talking
Speaker 1: about paracutaneous space, and I was like, I wish I
Speaker 1: could find the essay. It was one of the cooler
Speaker 1: things I've ever read, or that cool uh thing you
Speaker 1: can do, like when you close your eyes and you
Speaker 1: can feel when someone's hand gets close to your face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, because they said it's not it's not
Speaker 1: you don't have to be touching. It can be up
Speaker 1: to like five centimeters away, and that paracutaneous space is
Speaker 1: still going to give your your brain information. It's our energy,
Speaker 1: bro it is man, Chakra, do you got anything else?
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. I wish we could just talk
Speaker 1: about this stuff all day. It's good stuff, I agree,
Speaker 1: and I think everybody listening agrees. And since Chuck said
Speaker 1: good stuff, that means it's time for a listener. Man.
Speaker 1: But if you're like, you know, after we record, we
Speaker 1: can just keep chatting about it, that's okay. I'm not
Speaker 1: doing anything else. I gotta ticket nap you all right.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this license plate funny boy. You never
Speaker 1: know with this show what people are gonna respond to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that one got so much license plates just
Speaker 1: people loved it. It was really we got a lot
Speaker 1: of email about it. I think the ubiquity of some
Speaker 1: of these lend itself to that. But here we go.
Speaker 1: I love the episode of license Plate Guys, despite what
Speaker 1: Josh predicted at the beginning, because I think you said
Speaker 1: it was gonna be boring or something. How wrong I did. Sorry.
Speaker 1: I was surprised that you hadn't come across the lists
Speaker 1: of rejected vanity plates that you can find for different states.
Speaker 1: I'm seventeen, and when I got my license about a
Speaker 1: year ago, these state kept lists of vanity license plates.
Speaker 1: Were almost legend in our driver's head. I don't know
Speaker 1: if Georgia keeps track, but Utah Shirt does. It's still
Speaker 1: very fun to delight in your inner six year old
Speaker 1: when you're reading these. My personal favorites are lilt toot
Speaker 1: poops with a Z and I can't believe this one.
Speaker 1: I know, I guess these are rejected huh uh I'm farting.
Speaker 1: Someone actually wanted a license weight that said I'm farting.
Speaker 1: I like that. I would love to see that in
Speaker 1: real life. I would too, highly recommend you try and
Speaker 1: find the list for Georgia guys. The ones that aren't
Speaker 1: like super racists are pretty fun to read through. Much
Speaker 1: love from Elijah uh he him from Probo Utah awesome, Elijah,
Speaker 1: that's really cool. Thank you for that. We totally didn't
Speaker 1: run across this, so thanks for bringing it to our attention. Um.
Speaker 1: And speaking of Utah Chuck, it just reminded me. Have
Speaker 1: you seen Friend of the Family on Peacock No, I
Speaker 1: don't know anything about it. Uh. It is off the rails.
Speaker 1: It's set in the seventies, true story, weirdo true crime
Speaker 1: in a way, but also just beyond nuts um and
Speaker 1: has the extra bonus of my niece Mila being in it.
Speaker 1: She's one of the daughters. Fantastic check it out. Though
Speaker 1: it's really it's really good with thro without Mila, but
Speaker 1: it's even better because Mela's in it, of course. And
Speaker 1: you know, while we're shouting now Peacock, I don't know
Speaker 1: if we ever shouted out our good friend Andy Sierra's show,
Speaker 1: The Resort. Oh no, we don't know. Yeah, it's our
Speaker 1: old friend Andy Sierra, who uh we got to know
Speaker 1: through the band. He was in the Henry Clay People.
Speaker 1: He and his brother Joey long story short, they wrote
Speaker 1: the theme song to our TV show and we're also
Speaker 1: story editors as screenwriters for our show. Uh. Andy's the
Speaker 1: one that did the Hulu movie with Andy Sandberg called
Speaker 1: Palm Springs, and uh he has his very own TV
Speaker 1: show that is fully on Peacock now. It's called The Resort.
Speaker 1: It is really good. Joey was a writer on it
Speaker 1: as well, and it's just a very cool, fun show.
Speaker 1: I highly recommended Emily and I loved it. Well. Congratulations Andy,
Speaker 1: that's enormous good stuff. Yeah, we're gonna check that out.
Speaker 1: Thanks for telling everybody about it too. Chuck Well, thanks
Speaker 1: for Elijah for that email. And if you want to
Speaker 1: be like Elijah and send an email at Jogs our
Speaker 1: Memory to talk about unrelated TV shows. We love that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. You can send us an email to
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know is a production of I heart Radio. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H