Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: here we are with Part three of Tears. I think
Speaker 1: we have an interruption between parts two and three, but
Speaker 1: but here we are to conclude the series. That's right. So, uh,
Speaker 1: as with our past episodes where we've kind of just
Speaker 1: we've done part one in part two and then a
Speaker 1: part three and maybe more, Uh, this one is gonna
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a lot of catching up on things
Speaker 1: that we we've discussed a little bit on previous episodes.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be some new stuff. It's uh, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it's disorganized, but it's gonna be. Um. Just what
Speaker 1: are you getting at, Rob, It's it's more or it's
Speaker 1: more organic. It's like we we are we're exploring and
Speaker 1: reporting back almost in real time. Okay, it's so um.
Speaker 1: You know. On one area I wanted to start with,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to share this little bit that I
Speaker 1: read in Adult Crying from two thousand and one by
Speaker 1: Nico Van Harringen, and and in it, the author here
Speaker 1: is just sharing just a couple of tidbits about how
Speaker 1: ancient society has thought about tears. Quote. In antique science,
Speaker 1: it was believed that tears came from the heart Egyptians
Speaker 1: about fifteen hundred BC, the brain, and this they attribute
Speaker 1: to Hippocrates from the fifth and fourth centuries b C.
Speaker 1: Or glands at the punka lachrymalice uh attributed to Galen
Speaker 1: in the second century. See. However, after Stinson described the
Speaker 1: tear ducks and the main lachrymal gland in sixteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: it was accepted that tears originated there. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: a ton of great beliefs from the ancient world about
Speaker 1: the the anatomical origins of tears. Ideas about like when
Speaker 1: you're feeling a swelling of emotion that makes a bunch
Speaker 1: of vapors condensed in your heart and then they rise
Speaker 1: up to your head and have to leak out through
Speaker 1: your eyes. That's a good one, um. But I particularly
Speaker 1: like the idea of Galen that the tears come from
Speaker 1: the punk toa in the eyelids, these little holes uh,
Speaker 1: which are actually the holes through which tears drain out
Speaker 1: of the eyes, Because this is the same misconception that
Speaker 1: I had before I started reading about the anatomy of
Speaker 1: the eye and the tear ducks. Remember in part one
Speaker 1: we talked about how the tears are actually secreted by
Speaker 1: the lachrymal gland, which is above the eye, sort of
Speaker 1: above the eye, into the outside and then they drain
Speaker 1: away through these punkeda eventually into the lachrymal sack and
Speaker 1: the and the tear ducks in the nasal cavity through
Speaker 1: those are located on the inside of the eyes. And
Speaker 1: apparently I haven't tried to look in my own eyes,
Speaker 1: but I have seen images of this. Apparently you can
Speaker 1: actually see your own punk to laccry malice, the little
Speaker 1: holes in your eyelids that tears drain away through, if
Speaker 1: you look really close. I believe I've I've I've spotted
Speaker 1: mind before. Yeah, But but looking at them and thinking
Speaker 1: this is where the tears come from. It's like if
Speaker 1: you were to look at a bathtub and say, oh,
Speaker 1: this hole in the bottom, this is from which the
Speaker 1: waters rise and fill the tub for my bath But
Speaker 1: of course, if that is how you're filling your bathtub,
Speaker 1: something is wrong. You should not get into that tub. Oh.
Speaker 1: Revisiting our theme of the tear ducks being the sewer
Speaker 1: of the eye. Yeah. Now, as far as tears emerging
Speaker 1: from the brain, I really love that idea too, because because,
Speaker 1: on one hand, it is it's kind of correct in
Speaker 1: a sense when you're talking about emotional tears, especially, But
Speaker 1: the idea that's like tears are in some level like
Speaker 1: brain juice, I think that's lovely, especially when we're talking
Speaker 1: about how tears are generally seen as a as a
Speaker 1: kind of pure immission of the body. But if we
Speaker 1: were to think of them as is the leakings of
Speaker 1: of an emotional brain or an enraged brain or what
Speaker 1: have you, Uh, it paints a different picture. Now, one
Speaker 1: interesting thing we have heard back from a couple of
Speaker 1: listeners about is, uh, we we've gotten some resistance to
Speaker 1: the idea we discussed in previous episodes that humans are
Speaker 1: the only animals that are known to cry tears as
Speaker 1: an emotional response to shed liquid out of their lachrymal
Speaker 1: glands in response to emotions, which we want to be
Speaker 1: very clear, is not the same as saying that other
Speaker 1: animals don't feel emotions. It's just that tears are a
Speaker 1: particular behavioral anatomical response to emotions that appears to only
Speaker 1: be present in Homo sapiens. Other animals can have all
Speaker 1: kinds of complex emotions that we maybe couldn't even begin
Speaker 1: to fathom. They just don't particularly seem to have this
Speaker 1: response to liquid coming out of the eyes as a result.
Speaker 1: Um And and it turns out that this conviction that
Speaker 1: animals must shed emotional tears of some kind does seem
Speaker 1: to be It does seem to go pretty pretty far
Speaker 1: back with people making case reports here and there. I
Speaker 1: was reading an article that I'm definitely gonna return to
Speaker 1: in this episode that was by uh by ad Finger Hoots,
Speaker 1: who is a Dutch psychologist who's a researcher on tears,
Speaker 1: who we've mentioned in the previous episodes and we'll come
Speaker 1: back to again today and Lauren em Bilsma in Emotion
Speaker 1: Review in TwixT and they discussed the idea of emotional
Speaker 1: tears in non human animals. They say that there have
Speaker 1: been reports of emotional tearfulness in horses and lions. This
Speaker 1: goes back to plenty of the Elder Uh in crocodiles.
Speaker 1: This goes back to Alien, who was a who wrote
Speaker 1: in the second centuries. I think UH too like Shakespeare's
Speaker 1: talking about how dear can weep emotionally. Of course, reports
Speaker 1: of elephants crying emotional tears, this is something we can
Speaker 1: come back to in a minute, uh, guerrillas and so forth.
Speaker 1: But despite these case reports, they say that the best
Speaker 1: systematic studies that that involved surveys of veterinarians, zookeepers, and
Speaker 1: other professionals who work with animals on a regular basis
Speaker 1: or in a scientific capacity, has essentially yielded no evidence
Speaker 1: at all of emotional tears in any animal species other
Speaker 1: than humans. So it really does seem to be a
Speaker 1: uniquely human trade. But it is fun to look in
Speaker 1: to it to to to answer the question why have
Speaker 1: we come to believe or or say that certain animals
Speaker 1: shed tears? Right, So let's start with the idea of
Speaker 1: of crocodile tears, because yeah, this is this is a
Speaker 1: fun one because it touches on croc biology, folk belief,
Speaker 1: and of course alligator persons in the bog and fog um.
Speaker 1: I also wonder if part of it comes from from
Speaker 1: a Western bias against non spontaneous weeping, which I'll get
Speaker 1: into a little bit later, and I think I've touched
Speaker 1: on in previous episodes um a Western bias against it
Speaker 1: in their own culture, but also how it is utilized
Speaker 1: in other cultures. The idea that tears on purpose cannot
Speaker 1: be real tears. Um and And as well discuss this
Speaker 1: does not seem to be the case. But anyway, the
Speaker 1: idea of the crocodile here is that a crocodile sheds
Speaker 1: false tears for the prey it has just killed. And
Speaker 1: this tends to depict something sinister about the crocodile and
Speaker 1: something dubliquitous about the human you're talking about, because generally
Speaker 1: that's what we're talking about, like, oh, that politicians shedding
Speaker 1: crocodile tears, this person shedding crocodile tears, which is to say,
Speaker 1: they're putting on a false face of emotion, they're intentionally
Speaker 1: being emotional, or even if maybe in some literal cases
Speaker 1: they're literally shedding tears, and you doubt the authenticity of
Speaker 1: those tears. Yeah, And the idea of crocodile tears as
Speaker 1: something that's sort of like called out by the peep
Speaker 1: by the writers of natural histories and regarded in some
Speaker 1: way as evil or suspect does go back further than
Speaker 1: the idea of crocodile tears as a specific case of hypocrisy.
Speaker 1: I was real. There's a section about the history of
Speaker 1: the concept of crocodile tears in at fingerhoots book Why
Speaker 1: Only Humans Weep, Unraveling the Mysteries of Tears. This is
Speaker 1: from Oxford University Press. So Fingerhoots is tracing this idea
Speaker 1: and he mentions a writer, a bishop, a Christian bishop
Speaker 1: named sat Asterius, who is writing around the r. Four hundred,
Speaker 1: who wrote that quote crocodiles mourn over the human heads
Speaker 1: they devour and weep not from repentance, but because heads
Speaker 1: have no edible flesh. Uh. And so I like that.
Speaker 1: That's not quite yet to the idea of hypocrisy, but
Speaker 1: it is saying something about like the I don't know,
Speaker 1: the crocodile is so greedy and so cruel that even
Speaker 1: when it's got a human head in its mouth, it's
Speaker 1: not satisfied. It's just like this is not good enough meat.
Speaker 1: This is just so depressing. This head is is garbage.
Speaker 1: Now in terms of of actually observing crocodiles, and you know,
Speaker 1: and the eyes of the crocodile. Uh. So, yes, crocodiles
Speaker 1: do have non emotional tears because they do have to
Speaker 1: keep their eyes lubricated, and apparently if they've been out
Speaker 1: of the water for a spell, these tears may be
Speaker 1: more noticeable and may uh you know, and maybe and
Speaker 1: may be observed while the animal is feeding, if it
Speaker 1: is then feeding or messing around with with some sort
Speaker 1: of a carcass on the shore. I was looking around
Speaker 1: in a two thousand six study at the University of
Speaker 1: Florida found that there does seem to be something to
Speaker 1: these observations and it but into by that, I mean
Speaker 1: that people may have observed crocodiles appearing to shed tears that,
Speaker 1: to be clear, are not emotional tears. But it may
Speaker 1: be just due to warm air forced through the sinuses
Speaker 1: during feeding pushing out more liquid. Okay, so this would
Speaker 1: just be like a to the extent that this could
Speaker 1: actually be something you would observe. It's just a sort
Speaker 1: of coincidental byproduct of what the animal is doing with
Speaker 1: its head while it's eating. Yeah, it's like if you're
Speaker 1: observing certain varieties of of of the iguanas that that
Speaker 1: swim in in salt water and then they're blasting salt
Speaker 1: out of their face when they're on the as they
Speaker 1: do when they're on the shore, Like that is not
Speaker 1: emotional crying. It's it's it's you can also say that's
Speaker 1: not even crying, that's a step beyond. But yeah, we
Speaker 1: we can't take this, uh anatomical process and say that
Speaker 1: this is this might be some sort of an emotional outpouring,
Speaker 1: that it has anything to do with what's going on
Speaker 1: with human emotional tears. Though many years later this did
Speaker 1: develop into the idea that that is the origin of
Speaker 1: the expression crocodile tears. Now that the crocodile will will
Speaker 1: sort of weep false tears as a way of eliciting
Speaker 1: sympathy from a victim or like luring someone close to
Speaker 1: them and then uh, and then it will bite them
Speaker 1: and weep while it's eating them. Imagine if that was
Speaker 1: an adaptive trait. I don't think that would work. We
Speaker 1: see a crocodile crying and we're like, oh ah, a
Speaker 1: little buddy, he's sad about it. Clearly we can't lash out, um,
Speaker 1: but you you know, don't lash out at crocodiles anyway.
Speaker 1: But the other major animal that you sometimes see discussions
Speaker 1: about regarding their their potential tears, uh, these involve the elephant,
Speaker 1: and we actually heard from at least one listener I
Speaker 1: think more than one who wrote in on the topic
Speaker 1: of elephants allegedly shedding emotional tears. And the thing is,
Speaker 1: you do see this still make the rounds on say
Speaker 1: social media. And part of this is, you know, elephants
Speaker 1: are sometimes in in tough situations and they do, uh,
Speaker 1: they do seem to have have, you know, fairly complex
Speaker 1: emotional lives. So we're not denying that that elephants have emotions. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and when we're looking at some of these scenarios,
Speaker 1: you know, we want elephants to be able to cry
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, like we we knowing that they
Speaker 1: have emotions, we want to give them human tears. And
Speaker 1: you have various accounts that make the rounds on the
Speaker 1: internet about them shedding emotional tears, like look at this
Speaker 1: baby elephant. It's in a tough spot, it's shedding tears.
Speaker 1: Look at this mother elephant. Uh, something horrible happened. She
Speaker 1: is she is shedding tears. She is a displaying emotion
Speaker 1: and we can connect with it. Well. I mean again,
Speaker 1: I think this might be actually illustrative of something about
Speaker 1: the importance of tears as a social signal between humans
Speaker 1: that we we have this instinct that says, if if
Speaker 1: an animal is experiencing real important emotions, they must be
Speaker 1: capable of shedding tears, which again, it that does not
Speaker 1: follow at all, Like, you know, an animal could have
Speaker 1: perfect it could have stronger emotions than humans do and
Speaker 1: just not have this behavioral response to them. Absolutely, so
Speaker 1: we are not denying elephants complex emotional states, but we
Speaker 1: will denied in tear ducts because that's exactly what evolution
Speaker 1: has denied them. Uh And and this is where it
Speaker 1: gets really fascinating. I was not familiar with this or
Speaker 1: I had, you know, one of these things I maybe
Speaker 1: read in the past, and it didn't really like, you know,
Speaker 1: strike to strike a chord with me. But facts are facts.
Speaker 1: Not only do they lack tear ducts, they actually lack
Speaker 1: all of the plumbing associated with mammalian tears. So no glands,
Speaker 1: no ducks, no canals, nothing interesting. Yeah, they retain mucus glands,
Speaker 1: but nothing else. So one theory as to why why
Speaker 1: this is the case is that they seem to have
Speaker 1: evolved through a semi aquatic past and lost their tier
Speaker 1: systems during that time, much like modern pinnipeds lacked tear
Speaker 1: glands and tier ducts. Oh, this is funny. So there
Speaker 1: may sort of be an aquatic ape equivalent of the
Speaker 1: the elephant. Uh, the elephants evolutionary ancestor the sort of
Speaker 1: a life more based in waiting around in the water, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: but it's doing the opposite of what you know, we
Speaker 1: got to do that in the previous episode about the
Speaker 1: hypothesis that that human tears and our ability to shed
Speaker 1: emotional tears are somehow connected to a supposed aquatic eight past. Well,
Speaker 1: here's a creature, uh with with what seems to be
Speaker 1: at least semi aquatic past, and it lost the ability
Speaker 1: to shed years like other mammals do during the transformation. Interesting,
Speaker 1: this is, so what is going on with elephant eyes? Okay?
Speaker 1: So with the elephants. So the thing is you still
Speaker 1: your eyes still need to be moist That's that's the
Speaker 1: important thing here. You can't know you can't do without it.
Speaker 1: So with the elephant, other glands around the eye were
Speaker 1: essentially repurposed through evolution to provide moisture to the eye.
Speaker 1: So there's a third eyelid gland um we've talked about
Speaker 1: third eyelids before. You know, this is like you have
Speaker 1: the eyelid one and two are the ones that we
Speaker 1: have the top and the bottom, But then a lot
Speaker 1: of animals have a have a third as well that
Speaker 1: is involved. So the third island gland was an accessory
Speaker 1: gland repurpose. The third eyelid gland is found on other
Speaker 1: animals as well, but in the elephant it's extremely well
Speaker 1: developed to make up what for what was lost. And
Speaker 1: there are also some other tier cocktail differences with the
Speaker 1: elephant tiers as well due to these changes. So you
Speaker 1: can so scientists have been able to like look at
Speaker 1: the substance of the of of the the moisture the
Speaker 1: liquid in an elephant's eye, and they can they can
Speaker 1: see that while the actual chemical makeup of it is
Speaker 1: a little different from what you would find in in
Speaker 1: you know, typical mammalian tears. Okay, so despite their different
Speaker 1: ocular anatomy, they've got some kind of liquid, uh combination
Speaker 1: of like mucus and and and oils and some kind
Speaker 1: of liquid that maybe on and around the eye and
Speaker 1: that's just sort of hanging out there now. If they
Speaker 1: don't have tear ducks through which these things would be
Speaker 1: draining away. Where does the liquid go ah, And that
Speaker 1: is where a lot of these observations of elephant tears
Speaker 1: come from. Um they end up look like they're crying
Speaker 1: because of the Again, their eyes don't have drainage canals.
Speaker 1: Their eyes just fill up and then it streams down
Speaker 1: the face. Sometimes there's even a foam due to the
Speaker 1: accumulation of sivum and mucus. And this is fascinating too,
Speaker 1: because this reminds me of of my son's issues with
Speaker 1: his tear ducks. Having like that was that was the
Speaker 1: reason his his eyes would well up with tears so easily,
Speaker 1: not because he was emotional or or anything. It's just
Speaker 1: the drainage was was messed up, uh, so he would
Speaker 1: his eyes would well with tears just by virtue of
Speaker 1: not having a good drainage system in place until it
Speaker 1: was corrected with a tube. So if it's just common
Speaker 1: for elephants to have sort of liquid mucus, various things
Speaker 1: sort of dripping out of their eyes as a standard
Speaker 1: feature of of what's going on with their ocular anatomy.
Speaker 1: And then you pair that with elephants sometimes being in
Speaker 1: situations where they appear to be experiencing emotions, probably are
Speaker 1: experiencing something that you could call emotions, and you you
Speaker 1: pair those two things together and you think, oh, the
Speaker 1: elephant is weeping because of its situation. Absolutely yeah, So
Speaker 1: it's it's fascinating. I love how this, how this turns
Speaker 1: what we think about regarding the million tears on its head,
Speaker 1: And of course it plays into our our our tendency
Speaker 1: to want to see human emotions, not only human emotions,
Speaker 1: but but human anatomy and other creatures. Uh. And if
Speaker 1: anyone wants to learn more about this, I have to
Speaker 1: say that Rachel Warner has a great post on this
Speaker 1: at why Animals Do the Thing dot com. It's it's
Speaker 1: well sided and well written. I highly recommended all right
Speaker 1: well to come back to the subject of human tears
Speaker 1: and the evolutionary explanation for why liquid comes out of
Speaker 1: our eyes when we're experiencing strong emotions. Why this unique
Speaker 1: behavioral reaction that humans have to their own emotional states
Speaker 1: and to the emotional states of others. I wanted to
Speaker 1: come back to to this author I've mentioned several times now,
Speaker 1: the Dutch psychologist add Finger hoots Um, and one thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to start off with, was so there's a
Speaker 1: paper I said it a few minutes ago as a
Speaker 1: resource for the claim about other animals in the systematic
Speaker 1: surveys of veterinarians and zookeepers and stuff, uh, not not
Speaker 1: showing emotional tears. That same paper published an emotional review
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen by Vinger Hoots and Lauren in Bilsma.
Speaker 1: That's a good or because they review a bunch of
Speaker 1: the different sort of findings about human tears and and
Speaker 1: their uniqueness all in the same place, and that they
Speaker 1: argue that crying should be considered a unique human behavior
Speaker 1: that quote obeys the laws of operant conditioning and is
Speaker 1: under the influence of biological, psychological, and social factors. It
Speaker 1: is not merely a reflex symptom. It is a complex
Speaker 1: behavior that appears to have that have has some kind
Speaker 1: of biological genetic precedent, and then is strongly influenced in
Speaker 1: its expression by situational factors, both psychological and social. And
Speaker 1: they point out some other interesting facts that sort of
Speaker 1: helps solidify the question of the question we're looking at here. Uh.
Speaker 1: And one of these goes like this, So, okay, acoustical
Speaker 1: crying the sound of baby makes is obviously an attachment
Speaker 1: behavior that maintains the proximity of the parent. I think
Speaker 1: this is pretty clear that this is the main function
Speaker 1: of a baby crying, that the crying of a baby
Speaker 1: draws the parent near to provide care, protection, and feeding.
Speaker 1: And this kind of thing is necessary for helpless human
Speaker 1: infants because human infants can do essentially nothing for themselves.
Speaker 1: They are uh, they are all. They're exceptionally helpless as
Speaker 1: far as young animals go. Now, at some point we
Speaker 1: know that newborn babies cannot yet shed tears. But at
Speaker 1: a certain point point, tears leaking out of the eyes
Speaker 1: become a standard part of the crying repertoire. So when
Speaker 1: when babies are displaying this attachment behavior, this uh, this
Speaker 1: acoustical crying in order to summon the care of a parent,
Speaker 1: it starts incorporating tears as part of that behavioral repertoire.
Speaker 1: And then the interesting fact is that as people get older,
Speaker 1: tears could be seen too in some ways replace acoustical crying.
Speaker 1: So as we age, as we get older, people tend
Speaker 1: to cry less frequently, and when they do cry, they
Speaker 1: don't display the acoustical wailing properties of crying as much
Speaker 1: as babies do. Instead, they just shed the tears, And
Speaker 1: that's an interesting fact as well. Why are tears retained
Speaker 1: into adulthood in a way that the wailing of a
Speaker 1: baby is usually not. Another interesting developmental fact about the
Speaker 1: role of crying is the effect of physical pain on
Speaker 1: the tear response. So the authors here right that quote.
Speaker 1: Until adolescence, physical pain is a very important trigger of tears,
Speaker 1: but for adults and the elderly it no longer plays
Speaker 1: a significant role. However, feelings of loss and powerlessness seem
Speaker 1: to remain important for crying throughout the lifespan. So when
Speaker 1: when children get physically hurt, when they're feeling physical pain
Speaker 1: they scuffed their knee or something, crying is a very
Speaker 1: common response that mostly goes away in adulthood. Adults rarely
Speaker 1: cry as a result of physical pain and instead maintain
Speaker 1: specifically emotional pain feelings of loss and powerlessness or helplessness
Speaker 1: as the primary triggers of emotional tears. It's this interesting.
Speaker 1: I thinking about about times that I've been hurt, uh
Speaker 1: physically hurt as a as a as an adult. Like
Speaker 1: the one example that I can remember where I was
Speaker 1: hurt and I really had to choke back tears. Was
Speaker 1: when um, I was with my my son at the
Speaker 1: time was very young, and he was he was looking
Speaker 1: into a cooler full of ice cream at a store,
Speaker 1: you know, in public place, and I leaned over to
Speaker 1: look in as well, right above him, and then he
Speaker 1: excitedly hopped up and like did a like a leaping
Speaker 1: head butt into my lower jaw, like just like a
Speaker 1: like a child upper cut and uh and and and
Speaker 1: it really really hurt for a seconds, like you know,
Speaker 1: it's like being punched, um with with an uppercut and uh.
Speaker 1: And I like I had to walk away for just
Speaker 1: a second, like not out of the store, but just
Speaker 1: a few feet away, and I felt like I felt
Speaker 1: like tears of of of associated with the pain. But
Speaker 1: of course that's a more complex situation there, because it's
Speaker 1: like you're you're there with your son, you're in a
Speaker 1: public place. I'm guessing there might be some level of
Speaker 1: like like maybe I'm trying to you know, on some level,
Speaker 1: it's like my pain needs to be related to the child,
Speaker 1: who otherwise is not going to understand what happened, because
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I don't think he'd really even
Speaker 1: picked up as much language at that point. Uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the only time I can think of where
Speaker 1: it's like a physical pain plus uh something that that
Speaker 1: provoked tears. Yeah, and it's not the adults never cry
Speaker 1: tears in a response to physical pain. It's just dramatically
Speaker 1: less frequent than it is for children. Yeah. Yeah, with
Speaker 1: with young children, Oh, it's like it's everything, you know,
Speaker 1: it's the skin, knee, it's the uh, the bump toe
Speaker 1: or but then weirdly, the thing I always found amazing
Speaker 1: is that it was it was it wasn't like clockwork
Speaker 1: like a child would also just like sometimes they would
Speaker 1: would slightly fall over, you know, they were in the
Speaker 1: in the wrong mood, then the tears would flow and
Speaker 1: they need to be comforted. But other times they'd be
Speaker 1: into playing something and they'll take a fall that would
Speaker 1: just just lay out an adult for the rest of
Speaker 1: the day, and they just pop right back up and
Speaker 1: there they don't care. There's no emotional response in those situations. Well,
Speaker 1: I kind of can't help but immediately go to thoughts
Speaker 1: about um, helplessness versus agency in those different situations and
Speaker 1: and where the situations where as a kid, I remember
Speaker 1: sort of like popping right back up after an injury,
Speaker 1: or the times when I'm sort of like really engaged
Speaker 1: in a task and I can continue it, you know,
Speaker 1: like I don't feel like I've got to stop. But
Speaker 1: when you feel like you're hurt in a way that
Speaker 1: makes you want to stop doing what you're doing, that's
Speaker 1: when the tears would come on. It would seem yeh.
Speaker 1: But and and that may tie into the idea of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: now that I'm no longer in activation mode, but I'm
Speaker 1: in sort of like receiving career mode. Okay, it's time
Speaker 1: to cry because I need I need a parent, I
Speaker 1: need comfort, I need help. So I guess here is
Speaker 1: a good place to come back and briefly describe a
Speaker 1: few more of the hypotheses that have been offered over
Speaker 1: the years about possible evolutionary explanations for emotional tears in
Speaker 1: humans um In previous episodes, we discussed a handful of
Speaker 1: these that were probably we we judged on the wrong track,
Speaker 1: like the smoke from Funeral pyres Idea, which which seemed
Speaker 1: to lack a lack of coherent mechanism for how that
Speaker 1: would become a genetic behavior or um or talking about
Speaker 1: the detoxification hypothesis, which had a number of strong arguments
Speaker 1: against it. In the previous episode, we at least concluded,
Speaker 1: or at least I remember saying, I'm pretty well convinced
Speaker 1: that whatever the intra personal function of crying, maybe and
Speaker 1: it may have some functions like that, I think I
Speaker 1: think I'm probably convinced that the primary evolutionary justification for
Speaker 1: a adult crying of emotional tears is interpersonal. Is A
Speaker 1: is a social signal of some kind that is supposed
Speaker 1: to have an effect on other people around you, maybe
Speaker 1: too illicit caregiving from them, uh, to get them to
Speaker 1: help you, maybe to neutralize aggression, things like that. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I wanted to sketch a few more of these, uh,
Speaker 1: these hypotheses, uh and uh. A note that most of
Speaker 1: what I'm about to say here comes from summaries of
Speaker 1: these views that are that are in that book by
Speaker 1: ad vingerhoods Why Only Humans Weep? So, so this is
Speaker 1: his take on these different hypotheses, including some of his
Speaker 1: criticisms of them. So one idea that this one was
Speaker 1: actually kind of interesting, even though there are pretty strong
Speaker 1: arguments against it, is the idea of crying as a
Speaker 1: mucous defense. So around the year nineteen sixty, the British
Speaker 1: American anthropologist Ashley Montague argued that tears began as a
Speaker 1: mechanism to protect against the dehydration of an infant's airways
Speaker 1: during stress vocalizations. And it would go something like this,
Speaker 1: a baby needs something. The baby begins to scream and
Speaker 1: wail for help. It wants a parent, and this causes
Speaker 1: a lot of rapid inhalation and exhalation through the nose
Speaker 1: and mouth, and this rapid airflow could potentially dry out
Speaker 1: the protective layers of mucus that are present in places
Speaker 1: like the nasal cavity. Now, we don't often stop to
Speaker 1: appreciate our mucus, but your nasal mucus is a wonderful,
Speaker 1: beautiful thing. It is a wonderful biological adaptation that is
Speaker 1: extremely important. It protects the body against you know, irritating
Speaker 1: contaminants like dust and things. But it also very importantly
Speaker 1: protects the body against infection. That the mucus in your
Speaker 1: nose is a major first line of defense against pathogens
Speaker 1: entering the body and infecting you. And so under montague hypothesis,
Speaker 1: the tears that drain into the nasal passage through the
Speaker 1: tear ducts help keep this passage from drying out, especially
Speaker 1: during times of heightened air flow like the scream and
Speaker 1: whaling that would accompany a child's vocal distress signals. UH.
Speaker 1: This is further backed up by the idea that tears
Speaker 1: also contain a natural enzyme called lysisyme, which has antibacterial properties,
Speaker 1: which would seemingly provide further evidence that the shedding of
Speaker 1: tears during distress vocalizations may be helping to protect the
Speaker 1: body from infection. So interesting idea, But Fingerhoots has several
Speaker 1: arguments against this hypothesis that that I think are worth considering. Uh.
Speaker 1: First of all, he says, you know, well, babies don't
Speaker 1: shed tears for the first several weeks of their life.
Speaker 1: As we discussed in a previous episode, this would be
Speaker 1: at a time when the would probably be the most vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Another big strike against it is that we don't see
Speaker 1: a tear response in in reaction to other activities, especially
Speaker 1: like exercise that caused rapid inhalation and exhalation, which could
Speaker 1: potentially dry out this mucus and sometimes does dry it
Speaker 1: out if you go out, you know, running in the cold,
Speaker 1: like your your airways can get very dry. Oh man,
Speaker 1: can you imagine what tennis shoe commercials would be like
Speaker 1: if if if the rapid tear shedding was part of exercise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's hilarious. So well, I mean, one thing, Nike commercials
Speaker 1: and all this, why is it that athletic shoe commercials
Speaker 1: are always so wet? I mean, I understand it is
Speaker 1: true that people sweat when they exercise, but like those
Speaker 1: commercials really want to show you the moisture. They're always showing,
Speaker 1: like like beads dripping off of people's elbows and things,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, I know
Speaker 1: they want to drive home the physical exertion and uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, probably the sexiness of glistening bodies. Yeah maybe.
Speaker 1: And I know, you know, water catches the light. It's
Speaker 1: maybe it's just more interesting to shoot. Looks good in
Speaker 1: slow motion. Yeah, I can see that. But anyway, I
Speaker 1: think that's a pretty big strike against this hypothesis. You
Speaker 1: would kind of think that if it worked like this,
Speaker 1: other activities that could cause drying out of the mucus
Speaker 1: membranes and the nose would also elicit tears, and it
Speaker 1: just doesn't work that way. Also, why would other mammals
Speaker 1: not have a similar addup take ation so interesting? But
Speaker 1: I think some pretty strong strikes against it. Um. So
Speaker 1: there's another hypothesis of fingerhoods talks about, which is the
Speaker 1: idea of crying as a sort of a way for
Speaker 1: adults to temporarily become a child. This one is attributed
Speaker 1: to a Dutch ethologist named friends Um. Oh, I should
Speaker 1: have looked up how to pronounce this r o e s.
Speaker 1: That mightbe rose or russ maybe um. But it goes
Speaker 1: like this. So most adult mammals seem to be born
Speaker 1: with genetically determined instinctual tendencies to react to physical markers
Speaker 1: of infancy with nurturing behaviors and with reduced aggression. You know,
Speaker 1: why do we have such a deep biological reaction to
Speaker 1: things that are cute? And why does cuteness almost perfectly
Speaker 1: correspond to the characteristics of infancy? Uh. These are the
Speaker 1: things that are sometimes called the infant schema, things like
Speaker 1: having a large head, having a large, low lying eyes
Speaker 1: on that head, having bulging cheeks. You can look for
Speaker 1: this and everything from cute cartoon characters to stuffed animals
Speaker 1: almost anything and everything that is supposed to be cute
Speaker 1: in some way mimics babies or mimics infants of other
Speaker 1: closely related mammal species. And this is even true of
Speaker 1: like inanimate objects like um, inanimate objects that people find
Speaker 1: cute tend to be small and tend too maybe in
Speaker 1: some way look kind of helpless like a baby. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this reminds me of how especially in inanimate but I
Speaker 1: think you see this in Western animation as well. There's
Speaker 1: this tendency when something is being super cute, sometimes the
Speaker 1: the the eyes are made to just well with tears,
Speaker 1: like they're just vibrating with moisture. Very good observation. And
Speaker 1: I think that's uh some significant support for, at least
Speaker 1: in part, this idea, because it seems that there is
Speaker 1: so obviously there are these infant schema. Things that that
Speaker 1: look like babies in one way or another tend to
Speaker 1: just powerfully trigger us to reduce aggression, to increase care
Speaker 1: and nurturing behaviors, to make us say all and want
Speaker 1: to approach and take care of whatever that thing is,
Speaker 1: even if it's like a like a little like inanimate
Speaker 1: chair that's just kind of you know, cute and stubby
Speaker 1: in some way incredibly powerful instinct. But anyway, so there
Speaker 1: are elements of this infant schema that are based not
Speaker 1: only on static physical appearance but in behavior. So here
Speaker 1: I want to read directly from Fingerhoots as he describes
Speaker 1: this quote. Juvenile birds and primates sometimes behave like helpless newborns,
Speaker 1: particularly in begging situations. For example, a young hungry sparrow
Speaker 1: with a well developed ability to fly, may, in the
Speaker 1: presence of a parent, helplessly shake its wings, imitating the
Speaker 1: poorly coordinated wing movements of newly hatched offspring to support
Speaker 1: it's begging for food. And then he also writes uh quote.
Speaker 1: In chimpanzees, the pout face, which is the typical expression
Speaker 1: of youngsters when separated from their mother, can be observed
Speaker 1: in older animals when they are begging. If juveniles that
Speaker 1: behave in this way receive more food and support than
Speaker 1: those that do not display such behavior, this imitation will
Speaker 1: increase their fitness and thus has the potential to become
Speaker 1: part of the behavioral repertoire of a species even beyond
Speaker 1: its infancy. So in given all this, h Rose or
Speaker 1: Russ argued that human crying, including the shedding of liquid
Speaker 1: from the eyes was selected by evolution for this reason
Speaker 1: because it made the faces of juveniles and then even
Speaker 1: adults resemble more closely the faces of helpless newborn infants.
Speaker 1: And we are we're just strongly programmed to react to
Speaker 1: the faces of helpless newborn infants with nurturing, caring behaviors,
Speaker 1: such as, say, giving things to them or not responding
Speaker 1: to them with aggression, and so under this hypothesis, crying
Speaker 1: even an adults is a way of triggering sort of
Speaker 1: the neural cuteness alarm in our heads to turning us
Speaker 1: into infant caregivers, even when the person crying is not
Speaker 1: actually an infant um. And this is summarized with with
Speaker 1: a number of different ways that that uh, the moistening
Speaker 1: of the eyes with tears could make someone more closely
Speaker 1: resemble a newborn. These points would include, and this is
Speaker 1: from from Fingerhood summary here quote the moistening of the
Speaker 1: face which may remind us of the faces of newborn's
Speaker 1: wet with amniotic fluid, the uncoordinated, almost spasmodic respiration, which
Speaker 1: is similar to the initial respiratory efforts of a newborn.
Speaker 1: The correspondence of the acoustical aspects of human crying to
Speaker 1: the separation or distress calls of other animals, the closed eyes,
Speaker 1: the wrinkled skin around the eyes, the spotted coloration of
Speaker 1: the facial skin, and the open mouth, all of which
Speaker 1: are typical crying expressions shared with newborns. So this could
Speaker 1: have some arguments against it. For example, it still wouldn't
Speaker 1: explain why emotional tears would be unique to humans as
Speaker 1: opposed to say, other primates, but it could be partially
Speaker 1: on the right track. Now, I want to go lightly
Speaker 1: over a couple more that he mentions. One is the
Speaker 1: idea of crying as a symbolic representation of suffering. This
Speaker 1: one has attributed to the Spanish optomologist one marube Uh,
Speaker 1: though The Fingerhoots notes that the American neuroscientist Robert Provine
Speaker 1: has offered a similar explanation. And here the idea is
Speaker 1: that crying is a social signal of emotional pain that
Speaker 1: is adapted from the reflex tear response that comes from
Speaker 1: certain types of physical pain. And this would have some
Speaker 1: precedent and animal behavior, because animals seem to have evolutionarily
Speaker 1: developed social signals uh to one another that are based
Speaker 1: on the appearance of behaviors that are originally not for signaling.
Speaker 1: For example, the idea that the social signal of anger
Speaker 1: represented by bared teeth maybe based on originally non communicative
Speaker 1: eating behaviors. So maybe the idea is, you know, originally
Speaker 1: an animal that looks like it is intently like gnawing
Speaker 1: on a bone or eating or something, you don't want
Speaker 1: to like approach that animal and try to mess with
Speaker 1: it because you know you're getting in between it and
Speaker 1: its food. Maybe you could sort of like re like
Speaker 1: play on that instinct by showing your teeth to another
Speaker 1: animal even while you're not eating this saying like I
Speaker 1: am you know, don't mess with me right now. Or similarly,
Speaker 1: like the the social signal of disgust maybe based on
Speaker 1: originally non communicative rejection behaviors like vomiting or spitting out food.
Speaker 1: Are are the faces we make that others can see
Speaker 1: when we're disgusted by something kind of look like spitting
Speaker 1: out faces or vomiting faces, And under this hypothesis, tears
Speaker 1: could maybe be similar. Maybe what was originally a reflective
Speaker 1: secretion of liquid in the eyes in response to physical
Speaker 1: irritation of the eyes, some kind of pain or irritation
Speaker 1: came to be a useful signal of pain to other
Speaker 1: members of our species. It was it was useful in
Speaker 1: a survival sense to know when somebody else was in
Speaker 1: pain and may need help. And this could become abstracted
Speaker 1: to types of pain other than physical irritation of the eyes,
Speaker 1: specifically emotional pain. Than there's another hypothesis that fingerhoots mentions
Speaker 1: that is attributed to a science writer named Chip Walter,
Speaker 1: who argues that crying maybe a an important part of
Speaker 1: social bonding development in the history of the human species.
Speaker 1: It might be a sort of honest signal of genuine
Speaker 1: need due to what could be called a handicapping principle. Basically,
Speaker 1: the fact that, uh, you know that you would make
Speaker 1: really loud noises of helplessness and risk drawing predators nearby
Speaker 1: means you must really need help. Um. Honestly, I was
Speaker 1: a little fuzzy on how this mechanism was was supposed
Speaker 1: to work, But then the next one I found interesting,
Speaker 1: and this ties into something we talked about in a
Speaker 1: previous episode, the hypothesis that the emotional tears and adults
Speaker 1: are an honest appeasement signal. Uh. And this is traced
Speaker 1: back to the Israeli evolutionary biologist or In Hassan, who
Speaker 1: argued that, hey, tears blur our vision, and by blurring
Speaker 1: our vision, they make it difficult for us to be
Speaker 1: at peak fighting fitness. And so if it's more difficult
Speaker 1: to enact violence or aggression while your eyes are full
Speaker 1: of tears, Hassan would argue that tears are adaptive because
Speaker 1: they are an honest signal of decreased capacity for violence.
Speaker 1: Kind of like a dog rolling on its back and
Speaker 1: showing you its belly. It's like, Hey, I'm I'm putting
Speaker 1: myself in a really vulnerable situation. Don't hurt me. It's
Speaker 1: a kind of hard to fake white flag of surrender
Speaker 1: signaling I am currently helpless and we'll not harm you.
Speaker 1: Please help me, or at least please don't hurt me. So,
Speaker 1: under this hypothesis, tears would be adaptive because they help
Speaker 1: facilitate social trust. Now, whether or not this is truly
Speaker 1: a primary factor in the evolutionary of tears, this Hassen
Speaker 1: hassened white flag of surrender hypothesis, I do think it
Speaker 1: picks up on something that we were talking about earlier
Speaker 1: that I think seems almost undeniable, which is that tears
Speaker 1: are strongly strongly linked with helplessness as a condition. Studies
Speaker 1: that look into, you know, cases like when do adults
Speaker 1: actually cry? These studies tend to find that the adults
Speaker 1: often report the kinds of situations in which they're most
Speaker 1: likely to cry are ones which, in some way or
Speaker 1: other they feel helpless or feel a lack of control.
Speaker 1: Of course, as we talked about earlier, the role of
Speaker 1: crying in infants, both acoustical crying, you know, vocal crying
Speaker 1: and tearful crying is quite literally a signal of helplessness.
Speaker 1: It is because the infant is literally helpless and cannot
Speaker 1: do anything for itself and is requesting that a parent
Speaker 1: come to help them. And so I do feel like
Speaker 1: this is probably a pretty strong factor to consider when
Speaker 1: evaluating these different hypotheses, which you know, individual ones we've
Speaker 1: just talked about may or may not be correct to
Speaker 1: varying degrees, But I do think that in adults, tearful
Speaker 1: crying is very strongly linked to helplessness and probably serves
Speaker 1: some important social signal of helplessness. And and the signals
Speaker 1: of helplessness could take multiple forms. They could elicit assistance
Speaker 1: and social supports. You know, I am currently helpless and
Speaker 1: need care, or they could neutralize aggression. I am currently
Speaker 1: helpless and can't represent a threat to you. Please don't
Speaker 1: hurt me. Uh And And I think this is interesting
Speaker 1: because you can even see this in negative reactions to crying,
Speaker 1: Like when are the situations when people are the least
Speaker 1: tolerant of other people crying. It's in situations where you
Speaker 1: would be the least tolerant of somebody being helpless. It's
Speaker 1: when somebody is supposed to be useful and responsible and
Speaker 1: say like the workplace or in the military or something that,
Speaker 1: like people would react really negatively to seeing somebody else
Speaker 1: burst into tears, which I mean, I do have to
Speaker 1: mention I think that I think that's ultimately pretty crappy, Like,
Speaker 1: no matter what the situation is, like, if if someone
Speaker 1: is having emotional tears, like there's something going on, be
Speaker 1: it be it actual feelings of helpful, helpful helplessness, or
Speaker 1: or they are you know, they're engaging their mirror neurons,
Speaker 1: uh with within with someone else's situation, or perhaps there's
Speaker 1: some sort of you know, emotional imbalance going on there,
Speaker 1: Like there's something something is occurring and to say like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, don't cry. You know, people don't cry in
Speaker 1: this scenario. There's no crying in baseball or whatever the
Speaker 1: trope happens to be. Um, I don't think that does
Speaker 1: any good. Right, Well, it's in situations where people are
Speaker 1: less concerned for others well being and more just concerned
Speaker 1: with what can you do for me right now? I
Speaker 1: need you to be like useful and functional? Right It's
Speaker 1: it's when people are sort of looking at you in
Speaker 1: a more transactional way and just saying like, hey, I
Speaker 1: just need you to be on the ball. I don't
Speaker 1: really care what you're dealing with, right which it reminds
Speaker 1: me of an old Upright Citizens Brigade sketch. Uh. We've
Speaker 1: probably mentioned this in the show before the Bucket of Truth?
Speaker 1: Do you ever? Do you remember this from the The
Speaker 1: idea was that if there's this bucket, and if you
Speaker 1: look into the Bucket of Truth, you will you will
Speaker 1: confront uh the unmitigated truth of the universe, and it
Speaker 1: will overwhelm you and then you will be unable to
Speaker 1: stop wailing and weeping. And this would occur to most
Speaker 1: of the characters in the skit but then they have
Speaker 1: these these uh, these bits where I think they were
Speaker 1: going out in public and doing this like this uncontrolled
Speaker 1: weeping and uh and and screaming, as if they had
Speaker 1: looked into the bucket of truth. But at least in
Speaker 1: one of the skits who was while carrying out some
Speaker 1: other mundane task, which was always always struck me as
Speaker 1: an interesting juxtaposition. And I couldn't really say why. And
Speaker 1: perhaps this is that the idea that if you are
Speaker 1: fully engaging in emotional tears, that this this is generally
Speaker 1: the focus of what you're doing. You're generally not doing
Speaker 1: something else. You're not like, you know, mailing envelopes or
Speaker 1: whatever happens to be the case. Right, And you know,
Speaker 1: I think we can probably all say from experience that
Speaker 1: we're usually not at our most functional and and efficient
Speaker 1: while we're crying. Yeah, unless unless you're composing poetry maybe,
Speaker 1: or or a beautiful song. There's so many great songs
Speaker 1: about crying. Oh no, I'd say even they're like, while
Speaker 1: you're crying, you're not in composition mode. It's only reflecting
Speaker 1: upon those feelings later that you're really good at writing
Speaker 1: about them. Okay, if you try to write about if
Speaker 1: you ever tried to write about strong emotions while you're
Speaker 1: currently feeling them, I find it just doesn't work. Like
Speaker 1: you can't really there's not much to say about them
Speaker 1: while you're feeling them. It's only thinking back on them
Speaker 1: later that you can talk out them. Well, that's true,
Speaker 1: I mean, the best you know, if if you, I
Speaker 1: guess it would would do you tend to defeat it
Speaker 1: if you got into a good writing mode, because you
Speaker 1: would get into the flow state, and then you're you're
Speaker 1: kind of removed from whatever emotional state might have provoked it. Um,
Speaker 1: at least moved from the experience of those emotions and
Speaker 1: put in a place where you can reflect on them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but obviously looking into a truth bucket is a different matter.
Speaker 1: I guess you just have to roll with it at
Speaker 1: that point. Well, anyway to round out my thoughts about
Speaker 1: helplessness as as a factor in tears, um, While I
Speaker 1: am pretty strongly convinced that helplessness is a major part
Speaker 1: of whatever would be the ultimate primary evolutionary explanation for them,
Speaker 1: helplessness obviously doesn't explain every case of tears, or at
Speaker 1: least it it seems difficult to like you can imagine
Speaker 1: realistic crying scenarios where it is difficult to see how
Speaker 1: helplessness is relevant. Not impossible, but difficult. Just to think
Speaker 1: of a very very light example, Um, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: what's a comment? What's a moment in a movie that
Speaker 1: often makes you cry? I think about like, some of
Speaker 1: the moments in movies that made me cry the most
Speaker 1: are when a character who you didn't know if you
Speaker 1: could depend on in fact comes through. So for example,
Speaker 1: at the end of Star Wars, when Han Solo appears
Speaker 1: in the Millennium Falcon, you know, like that moment where
Speaker 1: he you thought he's left and gone off on his own,
Speaker 1: but he returns to to help his friends. That those
Speaker 1: are like the moments that kind of like get the
Speaker 1: tears welling up in my eyes, and it's hard to
Speaker 1: see how that really relates to helplessness. Maybe you can
Speaker 1: make a kind of very abstract argument has something to
Speaker 1: do with like needing the help of others. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I when I think about it, it's often like
Speaker 1: really tragic moments in films, or you know that the
Speaker 1: death of a protagonist, uh, like you know, the death
Speaker 1: of a key character in in the mission, uh, general
Speaker 1: he opens up the water works for me, you know,
Speaker 1: very you know these kind of these kind of moments
Speaker 1: are Oh, I remember watching The Untouchables and uh and
Speaker 1: the part where Sean Connery's character dies. I remember that
Speaker 1: being like real emotional when I was young. Also, that
Speaker 1: movie is super bloody. I don't know why I was
Speaker 1: watching that as a kid. But oh, there there was
Speaker 1: another one that came to Oh, what's the name, what's
Speaker 1: the name of that actor who plays the who plays
Speaker 1: the assassin for um for Capone in the Dragon Dragon
Speaker 1: Billy Dragon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's in. He's in the
Speaker 1: movie Vamp as well. He often played a very good lizard,
Speaker 1: e kind of reptilian. Yeah, bad dude, bad dude in
Speaker 1: that film. Um not the actor. I also remember as
Speaker 1: a as a young child watching Romancing the Stone. Again,
Speaker 1: I don't know why I was watching Romancing Stone. I
Speaker 1: think it was probably too young for it, but I
Speaker 1: remember crying when the villain died because it was like,
Speaker 1: or appeared to die weirdly enough. I think it's got
Speaker 1: his hand bit by by a crocodilian. Uh, a bit off,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a captain hook moment. And I
Speaker 1: was and I think the part of that was it
Speaker 1: was just it was sort of violent and and terrifying,
Speaker 1: and therefore that was my emotional response to that. And
Speaker 1: I remember an adult that was there comforted me and
Speaker 1: it's like, no, look he's okay, he's back to ata
Speaker 1: the heroes, um, And then I think he died again.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're willing to get really abstract and
Speaker 1: stretch it around, I think you can come up with
Speaker 1: helplessness or powerless explanations for a lot of these, even
Speaker 1: so called tears of joy or things and movies and
Speaker 1: so forth. Like I think about, you know, the tears
Speaker 1: of joy, like a parent experiences observing their child do
Speaker 1: something for the first time. I mean, you could argue
Speaker 1: that maybe that has something to do with like feelings
Speaker 1: of being overwhelmed by the unstoppable passage of time, right,
Speaker 1: you know, time is just like beyond your control and
Speaker 1: and you're seeing that development or or just general really
Speaker 1: being overwhelmed by positive emotions. Maybe just the fact that
Speaker 1: you are overwhelmed puts you in a in a sort
Speaker 1: of strange state of powerlessness or helplessness, even though the
Speaker 1: feelings are good. Yeah, yeah, I should say that as
Speaker 1: far as uh, evolutionary hypotheses about crying. Go. I know
Speaker 1: ad Fingerhoots himself has sort of advocated the idea that
Speaker 1: maybe adult emotional tears serve a kind of purpose that
Speaker 1: is similar to what would be done with vocal crying
Speaker 1: by babies eliciting is the social signal trying to elicit
Speaker 1: attachment behaviors and and care from others, but that there
Speaker 1: may be a specific advantage for humans in the shedding
Speaker 1: of tears instead of say, loud vocal wailing and situations
Speaker 1: where you need to be more subtle and directed, maybe
Speaker 1: you need to signal signal these strong emotional states in
Speaker 1: the need for help with just say, like one closely
Speaker 1: related person, instead of making loud noises and drawing the
Speaker 1: attention of everyone and everything, maybe even local predators and stuff.
Speaker 1: So I don't know what I think about that, But
Speaker 1: also an interesting idea, maybe tearful crying is a is
Speaker 1: a more targeted way of displaying this infantile helplessness that
Speaker 1: that elicits care responses. So at this point I thought
Speaker 1: we might take a lot of what we've discussed here
Speaker 1: and take it into the realm of mythology and religion,
Speaker 1: because it just gives us another vantage point from which
Speaker 1: to try and figure all of this out. Now, in
Speaker 1: past episodes, you know, when we get into the realm
Speaker 1: of mythology and religion were often a lot more specific.
Speaker 1: For instance, the idea of saying that dog carrying a
Speaker 1: flaming stick. When you start looking for explanations to that,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't have as many cultures to to
Speaker 1: to go to you you who have perhaps more of
Speaker 1: a riddle as to why this is a thing. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to weeping in mythology and religion, when
Speaker 1: it comes to God's weeping, humans weeping demi, gods and
Speaker 1: heroes weeping like a lot of it. I guess it's
Speaker 1: kind of obvious. You know, we are humans, we weep,
Speaker 1: We create these uh these these these uh these beings
Speaker 1: that are important to us, and of course they are
Speaker 1: going to weep, and they keep the humans in our
Speaker 1: story and the human like entities in our stories they
Speaker 1: are going to weep as well. And um and on
Speaker 1: a certain level, you know, it might not even seem
Speaker 1: that fruitful to really examine the scenario much beyond that,
Speaker 1: but but I still think it's interesting to to go
Speaker 1: into at least some of it and also look at
Speaker 1: some of the broader themes. So we've discussed the importance
Speaker 1: of water in both life itself and then the sorts
Speaker 1: of myth cycles that humans build up about themselves in
Speaker 1: their origins. Life depends on the water. Life is water, uh.
Speaker 1: And one of the key aspects of tears is that
Speaker 1: they can They tend to run clear or clearer than
Speaker 1: anything else that's gonna secrete from a human being. Uh.
Speaker 1: They are like water. They are our body producing water.
Speaker 1: And so in mythology especially, this is enough to connect
Speaker 1: the tears of mortals, but especially the tears of demi
Speaker 1: gods and gods, with the rain, with oceans, with rivers
Speaker 1: and floods. All of these, of course are our bodies
Speaker 1: of water that play heavily into myth cycles as well.
Speaker 1: I was reading about some of this in Pangian Flood Myths,
Speaker 1: Gondwana Myths and Beyond by Michael eve Vitzel, and the
Speaker 1: author points out the various tropes one finds in various
Speaker 1: religions concerning floods. Now. To be clear, there are floods
Speaker 1: in myth that are connected to urine, to blood, to
Speaker 1: the to the spilt belly contents of a monster to
Speaker 1: whale vomit. But one also finds various accounts where tears
Speaker 1: generate floodwaters or rains, and they might be the tears
Speaker 1: of gods or monsters, or from atoms, tears of repentance,
Speaker 1: this would be Adam, isn't Adam and Eve? And also
Speaker 1: from the tears of grieving lovers, and there seem to
Speaker 1: be just numerous examples of these. Going back to an
Speaker 1: episode we did a long time ago, causes me to
Speaker 1: think about the tears of Ray and Egyptian mythology, you know,
Speaker 1: the tears of the sun god Ray sort of falling
Speaker 1: to the ground and I believe becoming bees, the bees
Speaker 1: that would be used for for bee keeping, the making
Speaker 1: of wax and honey in ancient Egypt. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: indeed we do see life emerging from various bodily secretions
Speaker 1: across the global mythic landscape, including blood certainly, but also
Speaker 1: including tears. According to twentieth century folk loreist Stiff Thompson
Speaker 1: in his book The Folk Tale, it's part of the
Speaker 1: broader miraculous birth of the hero trope that one finds
Speaker 1: just throughout and throughout North American tribal beliefs. They are
Speaker 1: numerous examples of it, pregnancy caused by rain or caused
Speaker 1: by food, emergence from a dead mother, from the ground,
Speaker 1: or from a jug, but also the birth of a
Speaker 1: child from a clot of blood, from a splinter wound,
Speaker 1: quote from tears, or from other secretions of the body.
Speaker 1: And then interestingly enough, he also mentions, uh that that
Speaker 1: most frequently, uh, this is from mucus of the nose,
Speaker 1: again in North American tribal beliefs. I found that interesting.
Speaker 1: We often don't think about the divine nature of the mucus.
Speaker 1: But oh man, I was just reading actually in um
Speaker 1: Tales from a Chinese studio, there's a there's a wonderful
Speaker 1: little story that pops up so suitably weird, in which
Speaker 1: an individual's hanging out in his study and uh and he,
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of a Chinese scholar, and he
Speaker 1: sneezes three times. Each time he sneezes, he sneezes out
Speaker 1: a small creature, and then one of the creature eats
Speaker 1: the other eats another one and gets a little bigger,
Speaker 1: and then that creature eats the remaining creature. Uh and
Speaker 1: and and finally you just have one like larger creature
Speaker 1: that is formed of these different mucus beings, and then
Speaker 1: it begins crawling up the individual's leg and then once
Speaker 1: it gets to like the side of his torso it
Speaker 1: like attaches to his body and becomes a part of
Speaker 1: him and just mains there and you can sort of
Speaker 1: see the remnants of its eyes and its mouth. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's body horror. Yeah, yeah, it's really good. And then
Speaker 1: of course it is the nature in those the stories.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like, yep, that happened. Uh. At the end,
Speaker 1: I love it, And the local governor made a report. Yes, yes, uh.
Speaker 1: Now speaking of Chinese stories, Uh, there is a did
Speaker 1: run across a very minor Chinese myth. I almost I
Speaker 1: hesitated to include it because it's it's ultimately kind of mundane,
Speaker 1: but I think it's also illustrative of how of how
Speaker 1: tears and stories of tears can factor in. It is
Speaker 1: just about every level of our explaining the world. So
Speaker 1: there's the story in Chinese mythology related by Yang and
Speaker 1: in Turner in the Handbook of Chinese Mythology, in which
Speaker 1: the demi god Emperor Shoon dies and his wives grieve
Speaker 1: for him by weeping and ripping out their hair, and
Speaker 1: the tears splatter on the bamboo, giving rise to a
Speaker 1: variety of speckled bamboo. Oh. Interesting natural ideological myth having
Speaker 1: to do with tears. Yeah. Now, as far as h is,
Speaker 1: tears as the tears of God's go uh you know,
Speaker 1: God's being largely human and conception, of course they're going
Speaker 1: to cry tears. And it's interesting how their tears are
Speaker 1: basically just super natural amplifications of the roles that human
Speaker 1: tears play in in many situations. For instance, in Greek tradition,
Speaker 1: Eos weeps over the death of her son nm Non,
Speaker 1: who dies of the hands of Achilles. In the Trojan War,
Speaker 1: Zeus is moved by these tears and grants mem Non immortality,
Speaker 1: and then the tears of Theos the dawn are also
Speaker 1: associated with the morning. Do now, I thought we might
Speaker 1: turn to Judeo Christian traditions here and consider the Book
Speaker 1: of Jeremiah. Uh So, Jeremiah is often known as the
Speaker 1: weeping Prophet, but some interpret these tears is not only
Speaker 1: being the tears of Jeremiah, but also the tears of God.
Speaker 1: And I was reading about this in the Tears of
Speaker 1: God in the Book of Jeremiah by David A. Boss Worth.
Speaker 1: This was published in the Journal Biblica in and the
Speaker 1: author makes a connection between this weeping. This idea of
Speaker 1: of one weeping uh with God to God and then
Speaker 1: the tears of of God being part of this scenario
Speaker 1: makes a connection between this and attachment theory, which we've
Speaker 1: been we just discussed earlier. Um So in this the
Speaker 1: desired response to tears is empathy and support. Quote. Prayers
Speaker 1: often express a desire for proximity to the parent, like deity,
Speaker 1: who provides a sense of security through superior power and wisdom.
Speaker 1: In distress, the deity offers help and divine absence provokes anxiety.
Speaker 1: Weeping enters into this relationship when people at prayer hope
Speaker 1: that tears may motivate divine aid. Oh interesting, Yeah, So
Speaker 1: the idea here is Jeremiah. It would follow is drawing
Speaker 1: is is drawing on the parent child bond when he
Speaker 1: is weeping. And you know this this ties in well
Speaker 1: with the analysis of God beings in various religions and
Speaker 1: myths as being a kind of sky parent. You know,
Speaker 1: the idea of the parent extrapolated into the supernatural realm,
Speaker 1: especially coming back to the helplessness theme. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can think about multiple levels of helplessness. That you can
Speaker 1: be in a situation where you are helpless on your own,
Speaker 1: but maybe somebody else could intervene and alleviate the situation.
Speaker 1: But there are also ways in which you could be
Speaker 1: helpless in a way that cannot possibly be alleviated. Like
Speaker 1: I say, when a loved one has died. It's not
Speaker 1: like somebody can come and help you in order in
Speaker 1: like bringing them back from the dead or something. They
Speaker 1: might be off able to offer you comfort, but they
Speaker 1: can't actually fix what you know, the cause of your pain.
Speaker 1: And here though, if you think about the idea of
Speaker 1: being able to appeal to a supernatural parent who's all powerful,
Speaker 1: they could have the ability to actually fix things that
Speaker 1: go even beyond the powers of other people to help you. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so like when in Jeremiah we see this, for instance,
Speaker 1: Jeremiah nine one. This is the King James version. Oh
Speaker 1: that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain
Speaker 1: of tears, that I might weep day and night for
Speaker 1: the slain of the daughter of my people. Now, the
Speaker 1: Hebrew God was not the first to weep, of course,
Speaker 1: so the author points out that several laments from ancient
Speaker 1: Mesopotamia depict deities weeping over their cities. He points to
Speaker 1: the era Do lament, which describes the weeping of the
Speaker 1: god Inky for the city of Aradu. This is in
Speaker 1: modern day Iraq. Quote Aradus, a lord stayed outside his
Speaker 1: city as if it were an alien city. He wept
Speaker 1: bitter tears. Father Inky stayed outside his city as if
Speaker 1: it were an alien city. He wept bitter tears for
Speaker 1: the sake of his harmed city. He wept bitter tears.
Speaker 1: Bosworth also shares a couple of other examples featuring female
Speaker 1: deities weeping for their cities. But but Mesotamia and God's
Speaker 1: also wept for each other. In the epic of Gilgamesh
Speaker 1: we see examples of this. Ishtar weeps over the death
Speaker 1: of the bowl of Heaven and in other epics to
Speaker 1: gods weep over a great flood, and uh In Lil
Speaker 1: weeps quote over the misery of the gods and then
Speaker 1: makes humans do their work. I was still just thinking
Speaker 1: about this. Uh this passage you read from the Eridu lament,
Speaker 1: which is interesting because it it includes the idea of
Speaker 1: weeping as a result of separation outside the city, as
Speaker 1: if it were an alien city. Yeah. So again that
Speaker 1: role of like the being unable to sort of bring
Speaker 1: the parent and child together, like the separation causes the weeping. Yeah. Now.
Speaker 1: Bosworth also touches on Egyptian weeping gods. Isis weeps for
Speaker 1: her son Horace and her husband of Cyrus. So in short,
Speaker 1: there there's just a plethora of weeping deities in the region,
Speaker 1: predating the Hebrew god. So it stands to reason that
Speaker 1: this god too would weep as part of its relationship
Speaker 1: with its people, with its children or what have you.
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, he also points to an Yugurritic text from Yugurrit,
Speaker 1: an ancient ports city in northern Syria, that discusses the
Speaker 1: brain is the source of tears. Quote, son, do not cry,
Speaker 1: Do not shed tears from me. Spend not the flow
Speaker 1: of your eyes, nor the brains of your head with
Speaker 1: your tears, the brains of your head. That's great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is an interesting thing. Also that a lot of
Speaker 1: sayings about tears talk about them as if there's a
Speaker 1: kind of economy involved, Like spending tears is like spending money,
Speaker 1: like you have a like you have a you know,
Speaker 1: a sort of finite supply of them, and you shouldn't
Speaker 1: spend them on this or that. Yeah, and I guess
Speaker 1: you know a lot of that is connecting. I mean,
Speaker 1: on one hand, uh, you know, there's the idea of
Speaker 1: crying oneself out, that after an emotional outburst, there will become,
Speaker 1: there will come and d do it. You'll at least
Speaker 1: be exhausted with it for the time being. And also
Speaker 1: the idea that you can only I mean, how much emotion,
Speaker 1: how much empathy do we have to go around? How
Speaker 1: much empathy can we have? Uh for you know, for
Speaker 1: for those around us and those outside of our our
Speaker 1: sort of sphere of community. Uh. You know, I guess
Speaker 1: it ties into those various discussions, But it begins it
Speaker 1: gets complicated, right, because again we have this strong connection
Speaker 1: between this, this physical response and the idea of of
Speaker 1: human emotion and human empathy and suffering. Uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: all these these these ultimately kind of lofty human concepts
Speaker 1: that are then further further complicated by by human culture,
Speaker 1: human religion, human mythology, and and more. Well. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this raises another really interesting question about the purpose of tears,
Speaker 1: because you can think about tears on the other side
Speaker 1: of the equation, right, Like, it seems very clear that
Speaker 1: tears have something to do with a person who is
Speaker 1: helpless or feels themselves to be in some kind of
Speaker 1: state of helplessness or powerlessness trying to elicit care from others.
Speaker 1: But tears come on the other side to write, like,
Speaker 1: you have empathetic tears when you witness somebody else in
Speaker 1: a state of in a state of helplessness or uh,
Speaker 1: going through loss or something like that. So so clearly
Speaker 1: there's this more complex response that's bound up in in
Speaker 1: witnessing the pain or struggles of others, or even people
Speaker 1: weeping when they're helping other people, a kind of mirroring
Speaker 1: behavior there. Yeah, and in this I want to come
Speaker 1: back to a book I mentioned, Holy Tears Weeping in
Speaker 1: the Religious Imagination by Patton and Holly or edited by
Speaker 1: Patton and Holly, which is another one of these books.
Speaker 1: If you want more on this topic, Uh, this is
Speaker 1: a good one to pick up. But it goes into
Speaker 1: a great, great deal more detail than we're getting into here.
Speaker 1: But but in that, uh, one thing that struck me
Speaker 1: reading that is that, yeah, there's not just one way
Speaker 1: of interpreting how weeping factors into religious tradition. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and one of the big ones here is you can
Speaker 1: roughly divide actual ritualized weeping by worshippers into two categories,
Speaker 1: spontaneous weeping and non spontaneous weeping. The difference being that
Speaker 1: certain religious settings might cause one, of course to be
Speaker 1: overcome by grief or emotion and commenced to weep spontaneously.
Speaker 1: But then there are plenty of cultures in which weeping
Speaker 1: at say, a funeral is not merely okay, it's not
Speaker 1: merely permitted as just this kind of random emotional or
Speaker 1: even expected emotional outbursts that could occur, but it is
Speaker 1: also right and proper and even in some cases expected. Plus,
Speaker 1: While funerary weeping might largely feel like an individual experience
Speaker 1: and many cultures, uh, both for us and all of us,
Speaker 1: but there are plenty of cultures where it is seen
Speaker 1: as a communal outpouring and one that is less about
Speaker 1: us and more about the community or about the spirits
Speaker 1: of the dead. Uh. You know it. It gets into
Speaker 1: these ideas of of signaling that I'm i'm i'm I'm
Speaker 1: communicating with my community, and I'm even perhaps attempting to
Speaker 1: communicate with those who have passed on or to draw
Speaker 1: in on some of these ideas of appealing to deities, uh,
Speaker 1: speaking to them, speaking you know, cosmologically uh. And and
Speaker 1: in that, you know, you get into this divide of
Speaker 1: social versus existential protest. That's that's how the authors who
Speaker 1: refer to it, well, yeah, that a crying could be
Speaker 1: explicitly performative a performance in a way that you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes people would hear that and say, oh, performative crying.
Speaker 1: That means it's like fake or something. But I mean
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be any more fake than say, getting up
Speaker 1: in front of in front of a crowd and saying
Speaker 1: something about your remembrances of a lost loved one would
Speaker 1: be like because that is explicitly performing for other people
Speaker 1: on purpose. Does that mean what you're saying isn't true
Speaker 1: or that the feelings aren't real? Well, no, I mean
Speaker 1: it's just a it's a way of viewing what you're
Speaker 1: doing as a display for other people for them to
Speaker 1: experience as well and also engage in its social bonding. Um,
Speaker 1: the fact that someone would cry in order to be
Speaker 1: seen crying and heard crying by other people around them
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean that the crying is in some way
Speaker 1: manipulative or false. Right, Yeah, so we have this private
Speaker 1: versus public divide, spontaneous versus non spontaneous um and so
Speaker 1: so again coming back to the idea of like crocodile tears,
Speaker 1: I feel like that uh is I mean not to say,
Speaker 1: I guess there couldn't be a situation where someone's tears
Speaker 1: are are are are inauthentic. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: you know, it seems like if their tears going on,
Speaker 1: there's some sort of an emotional response going on. There's
Speaker 1: some there's some sort of emotional situation, you know, and
Speaker 1: maybe it's an actor summoning some sort of uh you know,
Speaker 1: past or or you know, somehow tapping into their their
Speaker 1: their emotional catalog to reproduce the physical act of of
Speaker 1: of weeping. Perhaps you know, if it's a paid more ner,
Speaker 1: for example, at a at a funeral, then in that case,
Speaker 1: you know, they are weeping for the dead, and they're
Speaker 1: they're they're connecting with the expectations of of this religious
Speaker 1: right and perhaps their own experiences. But it's not like
Speaker 1: there is not an emotional core word of what's happening. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know that this may be a difference in
Speaker 1: our experience of how the term is used. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think I would ever applied the term crocodile
Speaker 1: tears to somebody who was like mourning at a funeral,
Speaker 1: even if they were doing so in a performative way.
Speaker 1: It seems like I most often encounter that phrase used
Speaker 1: to describe perceived false uh sort of weeping by someone
Speaker 1: who has caused the very harm they are allegedly weeping over. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I was just thinking imagining the same thing, like what
Speaker 1: if Jack the Ripper went to a funeral, right, yeah, okay?
Speaker 1: Or what if Jack the Ripper. What if Jack the
Speaker 1: Ripper got caught and then cried in court saying like,
Speaker 1: oh please don't punish me, I'm so remorseful for my actions. Uh,
Speaker 1: And people would say like, yeah, how remorseful are you really?
Speaker 1: Are you just trying to manipulate us by by crying. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you put me in a difficult position
Speaker 1: of defending Jack the Ripper, if I'm gonna say say that, no,
Speaker 1: their tears. Absolutely, And I don't know that's a more
Speaker 1: complex situation right when we're getting into uh, you know,
Speaker 1: to what degree do we afford uh these kind of
Speaker 1: emotional states to UH, to two criminals, to convicted criminals,
Speaker 1: and so forth. But I guess the counter question is,
Speaker 1: is there a situation where the individual in that scenario
Speaker 1: is absolutely feeling no emotional state to produce those tears, Like,
Speaker 1: even if they're they're ultimately only feeling sorry for themselves,
Speaker 1: it's still an emotional outpouring. Uh. It's not a situation
Speaker 1: of like the crocodile has no emotion and therefore it's
Speaker 1: tears or not to be trusted. Perhaps the emotions are misplaced,
Speaker 1: or at least that is the argument. That's the argument
Speaker 1: that could be made. I mean, ultimately, I guess who
Speaker 1: knows what's going on within the mind of the accused
Speaker 1: in this situation. But but it's certainly not a situation
Speaker 1: of of the crocodile. Well, I wouldn't blame a crocodile
Speaker 1: for reading heads, But but they're so they're so unsatisfying,
Speaker 1: there's so little meat, so crunchy. I gotta say, Actually,
Speaker 1: while we were reading about crocodile tears, I came across
Speaker 1: the thing that really did make me feel super sad
Speaker 1: for crocodiles. And it was. It was also in that
Speaker 1: the Fingerhoots book with the section about the history of
Speaker 1: of the concept of crocodile tears uh And he's talking
Speaker 1: about a book called on the Nature of Animals by
Speaker 1: a Roman author from the second and third century named
Speaker 1: alien or Alienus, who does describe weeping in crocodiles, but
Speaker 1: not in the context of of any kind of like
Speaker 1: hypocrisy or anything like that. Instead, he talks about he
Speaker 1: claims there is an Egyptian city called Edfou also known
Speaker 1: as Appanopolis, where where people catch crocodiles out of the
Speaker 1: river and then they hang them up on trees and
Speaker 1: just beat them. They beat them with like whips and stuff,
Speaker 1: and the crocodiles cry. And when I read that, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, buddy's that's that's yeah, that's not good.
Speaker 1: Don't beat those crocodiles. If you take anything away from
Speaker 1: this this pod Guest episode, it's don't be don't be
Speaker 1: cruel to crocodilians, of course not yeah. Also don't be
Speaker 1: like you know, I mean, don't be super nice as
Speaker 1: in like feeding them, because that's also being mean to
Speaker 1: crocodiles if you're you're feeding them. Human food and leading
Speaker 1: them to associate humans with food, whether or not it
Speaker 1: looks like they're crying. Just leave them alone, leave them alone,
Speaker 1: let them do the their thing, You do your thing.
Speaker 1: Let's keep the distance, all right, We're gonna go and
Speaker 1: close this episode out here. Obviously we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from everyone out there about tears and uh, certainly the
Speaker 1: various hypotheses that we discussed here today and the religious connotations,
Speaker 1: and I know we've we've already heard from a lot
Speaker 1: of people, so we're gonna be talking about some of
Speaker 1: this in future listener Mail installments. I know we've already
Speaker 1: heard from someone saying, Hey, how about done, how about
Speaker 1: the frem and uh, what's their deal with crying? So, uh,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that specifically, probably on the next listener
Speaker 1: Mail episode. In the meantime, if you would like to
Speaker 1: check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: Our core episodes air on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed artifact on Wednesday,
Speaker 1: rerun on the weekend listener Mail on Monday, and then
Speaker 1: on Friday we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time
Speaker 1: to set aside most of the serious contemplation and just
Speaker 1: focus in on a weird move you. Thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for
Speaker 1: the future, just to say hello, you can email us
Speaker 1: at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows. Two proper charles