Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, which makes this stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: How's it going, Chuck? It is great? How are you, sir?
Speaker 1: I'm fine. I'm I can feel spring right around the corner,
Speaker 1: and I'm really getting a little excited. Yea, you know
Speaker 1: the groundhog Roscoe Pete, Colecrane, Coltrane. But yeah, is that
Speaker 1: the Georgia guy? No, that's um general generally, right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Where is Roscoe? The one in Pennsylvania? Now that's Paul,
Speaker 1: that's right, Pucks and Tawny, Phil Puny Phil, Paul Tucket.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's just some that's just some crazy guy.
Speaker 1: And Paul Tucket. That's Paul Tucket, Pete. This is the
Speaker 1: best start ever. Yeah, it is because none of this
Speaker 1: has anything to do with what we're fixing to talk about.
Speaker 1: Springs around the corner. That just tickles me to death.
Speaker 1: That's not no. Have you heard Chuck of a guy
Speaker 1: named and I'm sorry that I just shamed you on
Speaker 1: our podcast. It wasn't that bad. I've heard way worse.
Speaker 1: We've listened to tech stuff. That's right. Have you heard
Speaker 1: of a guy named Robert Waller? Uh? It sounds familiar,
Speaker 1: but I always say no and end up saying it
Speaker 1: doesn't know you have not heard of this guy. I
Speaker 1: would be very surprised if you had. Robert Waller in
Speaker 1: n was a Walmart employee, uh stalker apparently at the
Speaker 1: UM Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada store. Okay, okay. December was
Speaker 1: a big month for a new toy that had just
Speaker 1: debut called Tickle Me Elmo, and uh, Robert Waller was
Speaker 1: about to find out the links that people would go
Speaker 1: to to get their hands on one of these um
Speaker 1: on December fourteenth during a midnight madness sale. Apparently Walmart
Speaker 1: had sold out of these things, but that hadn't dissuaded
Speaker 1: customers from basically roving the Walmart impacts looking for him.
Speaker 1: Exactly behind stuff is knocking stuff over and they see
Speaker 1: Waller accepting a box of these from another employee, and
Speaker 1: they went after him. But really he suffered. Uh. He
Speaker 1: was pulled under, trampled the crotch was yanked out of
Speaker 1: his brand new jeans. Uh, he suffered a pulled hamstring.
Speaker 1: Back up a second. They physically tore the crotch from
Speaker 1: his jeans trying to get to this trying to get
Speaker 1: their hands on a tickle me a like exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but if there's like three people pulling in the same spot,
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy their strengthened numbers. Um. But so he
Speaker 1: was just swallowed by this pack of three people who
Speaker 1: who were trying to get to these tickle me almost.
Speaker 1: He suffered injuries to his back, his jaw, and his
Speaker 1: knee and uh, he suffered a broken rib and a concussion.
Speaker 1: Not funny, No, it wasn't funny. And we can assume
Speaker 1: that Mr Waller, ironically, in the course of giving over
Speaker 1: these tickle me almost was in no way, shape or
Speaker 1: form tickled. No, and that he probably didn't laugh because,
Speaker 1: as we know, tickling is related to laughter, as anybody
Speaker 1: who has seen it tickled me elmo. Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: have you stopped and wondered why we laugh when we tickle?
Speaker 1: I know you have, because you've asked me before you
Speaker 1: said we should do this, you know. As a side note,
Speaker 1: I read this awesome article in The New Yorker last
Speaker 1: week about crowd trampling and crushes and crowd waves and stuff.
Speaker 1: We should do a podcast on that. We talked about
Speaker 1: it in UM Riot Control Them. I yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting stuff. And sad I agree, and that
Speaker 1: they wrote this one because of the Walmart incident last
Speaker 1: year at Black Friday. Somebody died at that one. There's
Speaker 1: no tickle me almost, so I couldn't use it, but
Speaker 1: I saw that in my right screen TVs. I think
Speaker 1: we're the culp for that. That is so messed up.
Speaker 1: What is wrong with people? I don't know? And Black
Speaker 1: Friday deals everybody and he knows they've gotten increasingly suck
Speaker 1: here in this economy. Oh man, all right, so that
Speaker 1: was a little sidetrack. Sorry about that, Josh, No, that
Speaker 1: was the intro. Let's no, I mean, my little New
Speaker 1: Yorker thing. Let's get back to happier. Well, we we
Speaker 1: have a question before us. Why do people laugh when
Speaker 1: we're tickled? This has been around for a very very
Speaker 1: long time. People have pondered this kind of thing, right, Um,
Speaker 1: Sir Francis Bacon said that, Um, you don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: to be in a good mood in the seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: Kevin Bacon. Kevin Bacon was like, I'm I'm neutral on
Speaker 1: this subject um and then uh, Darwin was huge about tickling.
Speaker 1: He did a lot of studying of tickling. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that until I read this. He concluded that you
Speaker 1: have to be in a pretty good mood to be tickled,
Speaker 1: that you have to be in the right frame of mind,
Speaker 1: because both both um, tickling and laughter require a good mood.
Speaker 1: He was wrong, and tickling and laughter are linked. We'll
Speaker 1: get into that. But it's a question that very smart
Speaker 1: people have explored and failed to explain, and we're not
Speaker 1: going to explain it in this podcast Chalk. We're just
Speaker 1: not this was I wrote this. By the way, I
Speaker 1: want to apologize to you. I wrote this in like
Speaker 1: within a couple of months of getting here, and I
Speaker 1: was just out to prove myself and this is not
Speaker 1: my finest article. I confused myself when I went back
Speaker 1: and read parts of this. Can I can I read
Speaker 1: a sentence allowed written by your hand? Yeah, A gentle
Speaker 1: kiss can create physical arousal. So let's talk about what's
Speaker 1: the what's the physiology of tickling? Is that what you
Speaker 1: wanted to do. Yeah, let's talk about touch. You have millions,
Speaker 1: we all have millions of nerve endings, little tiny ones
Speaker 1: um under our skin that tell our brain when touch
Speaker 1: is coming or you know, something or something cold. That's
Speaker 1: how like it sends alerts like get your hand off
Speaker 1: the stuff, that kind of thing, right, that's one of
Speaker 1: the waves we survive exactly when they are stimulated, um
Speaker 1: by something like a light touch, which is called what
Speaker 1: it's called nismesas K N I M E S I
Speaker 1: S And that's um G. Stanley Hall and Arthur Allen
Speaker 1: who decided that there's really just two categories of tickles.
Speaker 1: Light tickling, right like say by a feather, very light touch,
Speaker 1: and then um heavy tickling, which by the way, is
Speaker 1: the only one that can induce laughter, which is called
Speaker 1: called gargolesis is not very good name for it. Now.
Speaker 1: So a light touch, let's say it sends a message
Speaker 1: through the nervous system. It goes to a couple of
Speaker 1: regions in the brain. Josh to help us along, called
Speaker 1: this so mattisensory cortex is right, and that analyzes touch
Speaker 1: and pressure, and then the interior singulated cortex governs pleasant feelings.
Speaker 1: So you put touch pleasant feelings together and your brain
Speaker 1: is going to calculate tickle and laughter maybe. So there
Speaker 1: you go. Well, that's that's the physiology of tickling as
Speaker 1: far as we know, and and anybody who's actually saying
Speaker 1: attention to that little spiel, your ears should have perked up,
Speaker 1: because it's fairly incomplete. We we gathered this information from
Speaker 1: the Wonder Machine f m r I. You and I
Speaker 1: both loved the Wonder Machine, but we both know that
Speaker 1: humans aren't fully capable of using it to its full
Speaker 1: potential yet, and therefore it doesn't fully prove anything. It
Speaker 1: just suggests everything. Let's just give a brief primer in
Speaker 1: the m r I. Okay, a d chuck, it's a
Speaker 1: fancy machine lights up and basically shows you what regions
Speaker 1: of the brain are activated when you're doing introducing certain
Speaker 1: stimula right, and by activated we mean like that they're
Speaker 1: suddenly getting more oxygen supply via blood than they had before.
Speaker 1: So there's a correlation. But the m r I doesn't
Speaker 1: show causation. Although it's a lot of people say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: the m r I shows this, so that's it's not
Speaker 1: it shows causation or correlation, not causation. Well, it also
Speaker 1: correlated in this case why we can't self tickle because
Speaker 1: the cerebellum says, hey, body, your fingers approaching your arm
Speaker 1: it and you know it's coming. And supposedly, if you
Speaker 1: know it's coming, you're not gonna be tickled. And people
Speaker 1: as far back as Aristotle have wondered why, and he
Speaker 1: supposed that, yeah, that's probably it, like you know it's coming.
Speaker 1: The thing is it doesn't. That doesn't fully explain it,
Speaker 1: because think about it, like when somebody comes to you
Speaker 1: like bor it totally does what what? But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that this is incorrect. The cerebellum is responsible for
Speaker 1: recognizing motion, not just in yourself but in others. So
Speaker 1: what they found is, for some reason, just based on
Speaker 1: m R S, when you're doing it to yourself, the
Speaker 1: cerebellum is less active. Basically, what they surmise is that
Speaker 1: your brain is judged that something totally insignificant is about
Speaker 1: to happen, so don't pay any attention to it. Let's
Speaker 1: just keep looking out for you know, antelopes to jump
Speaker 1: on our tigers that are coming at us. You know
Speaker 1: what that's called what sensory attenuation. Yes, and that's when
Speaker 1: the brain filters out. Like you said, anything unnecessary true
Speaker 1: to I wonder, though I read this, I wonder if
Speaker 1: someone with alien hands syndrome could tickle themselves. I would
Speaker 1: think wholeheartedly because your brain doesn't know what's going on
Speaker 1: and why because of an accident. Generally with alien hand syndrome,
Speaker 1: your brain isn't receiving the message that your arm is moving. Right,
Speaker 1: That's true. So I guess, yeah, I don't see why
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to tickle yourself. So I guess
Speaker 1: one thing, one idea for um that explains ticklishness, or
Speaker 1: the fact that we are ticklish, Um is supported or
Speaker 1: supports the idea or the reason why we can't tickle
Speaker 1: ourselves because it's insignificant, right um. And one idea why
Speaker 1: we are ar ticklish and why we tickle others is
Speaker 1: because it's a product of socialization and a tool of
Speaker 1: it too. Right, Well, you're talking about Darwin Hecker. Yes,
Speaker 1: uh e wall Hecker with Darwin Um. Like you said,
Speaker 1: they they hooked up together and said you have to
Speaker 1: be in a good mood. But that's sort of been disproven.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how they did these studies, though, they
Speaker 1: said that they would get people to watch like stand
Speaker 1: up comedy and get them laughing, and they found that
Speaker 1: they were no more likely to laugh when being tickled.
Speaker 1: I don't know about that, because if you're in a
Speaker 1: really bad mood and someone tries to tickle you, that's
Speaker 1: not working. No, that's not necessarily true. If you get
Speaker 1: a UM, if you're tickled by means of gargo Lisa's tickle,
Speaker 1: like tickling or laughter is involuntary. If you're ticklish and
Speaker 1: somebody gets you in the right spot, you can not
Speaker 1: be in the right frame of mine and you'll still
Speaker 1: like laugh and be ticklish. Yeah, no, no, no, and
Speaker 1: then we'll think about it. If you were ticklish, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I can suppose that. Okay, I'm sure you've seen people
Speaker 1: being tickled before. Like if your next being tickled, your
Speaker 1: shoulders draw up and like your hands go up and
Speaker 1: you're you're trying to push the person off of you, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: Or someone goes at your armpit, you you know, swat
Speaker 1: them away with a wax off exactly. Um. Well, one
Speaker 1: thing he goes that we um are basically taught that
Speaker 1: these are very vulnerable places in our bodies and that
Speaker 1: we need to protect them. Yeah, that makes sense to me,
Speaker 1: Like the neck especially, Yeah, there's a lot of important
Speaker 1: chunk in there. Yeah, and it's not even tickling with
Speaker 1: the neck. If someone comes at your neck, you're just
Speaker 1: natural responses hunch up your shoulders and like grab their
Speaker 1: hand or something. Somebody comes at you with the judo chop.
Speaker 1: So this goes back to when we were cave people, right,
Speaker 1: and vulnerable spots on your body where you could bleed
Speaker 1: out you want to protect. Now this, uh, this doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily go toward that explanation, but what you're talking about
Speaker 1: being in caves. Yes, this is extremely ancient, and that
Speaker 1: that's that's proven. We're suggested by the fact that all
Speaker 1: great apes um laugh when they tickle when they're tickled, right,
Speaker 1: little bona bows, and that's just that orangutange pretty much
Speaker 1: all of like the smarty pants primates, right, have the
Speaker 1: ability to laugh, and they laugh in different ways, but
Speaker 1: basically what it is it's a panting sound, right, right,
Speaker 1: So that goes to show us that you know, we
Speaker 1: diverged from apes ten to sixteen million years ago. If
Speaker 1: apes can laugh and we can laugh, that means we
Speaker 1: both came. We both laughing is older than that divergence,
Speaker 1: see what I'm saying, unless we evolved it naturally afterward,
Speaker 1: but that's less likely I think then it occurring in
Speaker 1: such an ancient way. It's that Also the idea that
Speaker 1: is even older than that divergence, um shows up in
Speaker 1: the fact that we're ats laugh when they're tickled. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's so cute. Did you sell the video to
Speaker 1: see the video they studied? Uh, sure, more than one
Speaker 1: person has done this, but Jake pant Skep of Bowling
Speaker 1: Green State University, that's my brother Falcons. They tickled rats
Speaker 1: and they found out they have a little chirp that
Speaker 1: um it's ultrasonic. Humans can't even hear it, but they,
Speaker 1: you know, were able to record this. And not only
Speaker 1: do they chirp when tickled, but they have a similar
Speaker 1: reaction that you were talking about earlier, like a little kid.
Speaker 1: Once they got used to the tickling, if you started
Speaker 1: coming at the little rap with your little fingers, they
Speaker 1: started chirping and wiggling around and throw themselves on their
Speaker 1: back and in anticipation. But it's also that same study
Speaker 1: and video suggests that it's it's play as well, because
Speaker 1: when the person stopped um tickling, he just put his
Speaker 1: hand in the cage and the rats would run after
Speaker 1: it in circles. Wherever he moved his hand, they'd go
Speaker 1: after it like they wanted to play tickle. See that's
Speaker 1: a rat study. I can get behind tickling rats. I'll
Speaker 1: do that all day long. Yes, So let's talk about
Speaker 1: some of the parts of the body though, because like
Speaker 1: the soles of the feet. Let's say, Uh, you walk
Speaker 1: on these not exactly vulnerable, No, not vulnerable. You walk
Speaker 1: on these heavy plotting every day. Uh. You would think
Speaker 1: that a light tickle would tickle the feet, and they do.
Speaker 1: But if you press a palm, like really hard against
Speaker 1: the sol your foot, it would not tickle. That's all
Speaker 1: true because of the Meisner's corpuscles. Corpuscles, corpuscles, they're very,
Speaker 1: very sensitive, and I get the indication that they're more
Speaker 1: sensitive than other areas of the body. Right, And the
Speaker 1: soles of the feet are loaded with these things. Again,
Speaker 1: no one has any idea why. And the fact that
Speaker 1: the soles of your feet, which aren't very vulnerable, especially
Speaker 1: pre shoe you know, pretty tough feet, when when there
Speaker 1: was such a thing as shoes, right, yet the feet
Speaker 1: were still understandably ticklish. Probably um. It kind of undermines
Speaker 1: that idea that it's it's um socialization of the vulnerable
Speaker 1: parts of your body. It doesn't make any sense, right,
Speaker 1: but that is why your feet while you don't tickle,
Speaker 1: While your feet aren't tickled whenever you walk, that pressure
Speaker 1: is different. Whatever. It could be a much different world
Speaker 1: everyone would have like balloons and stuff. What um. What
Speaker 1: I couldn't figure out though, is how it's tied to laughter.
Speaker 1: You want to know why you couldn't figure it out
Speaker 1: because it's not proven. No one has any idea. We
Speaker 1: just know that there it's involuntary. We know that it's
Speaker 1: not related to mood. We know that um not a
Speaker 1: light touch. That light touch, the nismesis can actually it
Speaker 1: can be arousing or it can be annoying, like a
Speaker 1: fly buzzing on you. That doesn't that doesn't cause laughter.
Speaker 1: You see a horse or a cow like whacking flies
Speaker 1: off of their hind d right, So that's why we
Speaker 1: have that touch. But it can also be arousing, and
Speaker 1: it's consider a type of tickle. It's the gargo Lisa's
Speaker 1: tickle that's laughter inducing. But we don't understand why. Another
Speaker 1: evolutionary biology theory is that um, it's a benign form
Speaker 1: of human conflict, so we can get our aggressions out
Speaker 1: without actually causing any hurt feelings and the laughter UM
Speaker 1: shows that it's all fine and dandy and nobody's really upset.
Speaker 1: But that's that's undermined by the idea that you can
Speaker 1: really upset a person by tickling them for a prolonged
Speaker 1: period past the point where they don't want to be
Speaker 1: tickled any longer. They can be kind of upset. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as a as a younger brother, you know this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well my sister actually her husband who was the boyfriend
Speaker 1: you know, years ago, used to tickle her like crazy,
Speaker 1: and you know, I got out of hand, she get angry.
Speaker 1: Tickle torture, Yeah, that's exactly what I didn't. That is
Speaker 1: that a thing. It's the thing I looked at, tickle torture,
Speaker 1: which I always thought was like medieval Apparently it's either
Speaker 1: Chinese tickle torture, Indian tickle torture, some exotic land tacked
Speaker 1: onto the front um. Apparently it may have been used
Speaker 1: in medieval Europe as a form of torture. UM bring
Speaker 1: up right. Nowadays it's used as a form of um
Speaker 1: torture in a very sexual way. Um, at least as
Speaker 1: far as Daily Motion is concerned. Um. But that that
Speaker 1: kind of brings up something or brings us back to Darwin.
Speaker 1: Darwin suggested that we tickle, and he probably has the
Speaker 1: most elegantly simple explanation. We tickle because we form social bonds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if somebody you don't know it tickles you, that's an attack.
Speaker 1: If somebody you do know and you feel comfortable with
Speaker 1: tickles you, it's intimacy. Whether it's parental or sibling or
Speaker 1: you know, the creation of or the strengthening of bonds
Speaker 1: between like sexual partners. It's like you said, it's intimate. Interesting.
Speaker 1: I wonder if the fact that it's uh, we retreat
Speaker 1: or react because we're afraid of an attack, and if
Speaker 1: if if it's the same with apes and rats, if
Speaker 1: that holds true for them as well, Like it's in
Speaker 1: a benign attack for them. Yeah. Well yeah, because they
Speaker 1: were talking about the apes like playing like they do
Speaker 1: it during play, and the rats seem to take it
Speaker 1: as play as well. Interesting, But what that is useful
Speaker 1: for we don't really know, or maybe we do know
Speaker 1: we're looking too deeply into it. We should do one
Speaker 1: on laughter period. Yes, I agreed, All right, let's do one.
Speaker 1: Be a good one. Um. I guess the answer to
Speaker 1: the question, then, Chuck, is we don't know why people
Speaker 1: laugh when tickled. That's disappointing. It's a little disappointing. But
Speaker 1: we'll come back to it when we be figured out.
Speaker 1: Well maybe we will one day. Okay, So if you
Speaker 1: want to learn more about how we don't have any
Speaker 1: idea why we laugh when we tickle, you can read
Speaker 1: this really kind of bad article I wrote um years back,
Speaker 1: and you can read it by a writing in laugh
Speaker 1: and tickle in the search bar at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com, which will bring up that article, and which
Speaker 1: brings up listener mail Josh. I'm gonna call this, uh
Speaker 1: kind of a mean thing to do, but we're the
Speaker 1: funny as well a munch Housen's um email. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: how to Control a riot? This is from Eric with
Speaker 1: the k Hey guys, hello stuff. You should know staff
Speaker 1: like we have a staff. It's me, you and Jerry,
Speaker 1: that's staff. I listened to how to Control a Riot
Speaker 1: and you spoke of mob mentality. It brought to mind
Speaker 1: a game that my friends and I used to play
Speaker 1: when I was in the Disney College program. So that
Speaker 1: was pretty good. If we were sitting around the apartment
Speaker 1: with nothing to do for the day, um, a group
Speaker 1: of friends would go into a Disney park until it
Speaker 1: was time to drink, so I guess you had pretty
Speaker 1: much free access to the Disney Park if you win
Speaker 1: this college program. We would get ten or more people
Speaker 1: together and stand in a line. The line would be
Speaker 1: in front of a wall or a fence, away from
Speaker 1: any entrance or exit. It is really funny to see
Speaker 1: more and more people get in line behind the group
Speaker 1: of friends. The best part is when at the same
Speaker 1: time the group just disperses at the same time, like
Speaker 1: the original people would just leave, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there's people standing in line. We're like, why are we
Speaker 1: standing by a wall? What was this here? Form? The
Speaker 1: buffudded look on their faces would really crack us up.
Speaker 1: I admit this is not the nicest thing in the world,
Speaker 1: wasting part of people's day at Disney, and I still
Speaker 1: get a chuckle though when I think of it. It's
Speaker 1: funny to me. Now you just go with the flow.
Speaker 1: I grouped this in with face the wrong way and
Speaker 1: an elevators something he does. It's very off putting. I
Speaker 1: just oh yeah, I do it all the time, but
Speaker 1: I don't do it to annoy people. I do because
Speaker 1: I'm like talking to people. Oh well yeah sure, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. I don't just stand there with strangers usually,
Speaker 1: I knee can't people who do that. You guys are
Speaker 1: the greatest. Is Eric with a k? All right, well
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, Eric for with the k. Look for
Speaker 1: your kneecapping if we're ever in an elevator together, or
Speaker 1: if you're standing by a wall from coming after you, buddy. Yes. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you have any stories about Disney, we want to
Speaker 1: hear about them, especially the gnarly uh seedy underbelly Disney,
Speaker 1: like it's Disney jail. Yeah and I heard it. There's
Speaker 1: just a whole underground under the entire park. That's the
Speaker 1: rumored with mutants. Yeah. Uh, Well, we want to hear
Speaker 1: your Disney stories. Please don't send us any heartwarming, heart
Speaker 1: felt ones that we can just find those anywhere. Send
Speaker 1: us your CD Disney stores and an email to Stuff
Speaker 1: Podcast at how Stuff works dot com for more on
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