Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. From housetop work
Speaker 1: got Carlo. One day, the men and dogs were sitting
Speaker 1: on the crest of a cliff which fell away straight
Speaker 1: down to naked bed rock three feet below. John Thornton
Speaker 1: was sitting near the edge, Buck at his shoulder. A
Speaker 1: thoughtless swim seized Thornton, and he drew the attention of
Speaker 1: Hands and Pete to the experiment he had in mind.
Speaker 1: Jump Buck, He commanded, sweeping his arm out over the chasm.
Speaker 1: The next instant he was grappling with Buck on the
Speaker 1: extreme edge, while Hands and Pete were dragging them back
Speaker 1: into safety. It's uncanny, Pete said, after it was over
Speaker 1: and they had caught their speech. Thornton shook his head. No,
Speaker 1: it is splendid, and it is terrible too. Do you
Speaker 1: know it sometimes makes me afraid? Hey, welcome to stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamp and
Speaker 1: my name is Christian Sager. Hate rob Have you ever
Speaker 1: been standing at the edge of like a cliff or
Speaker 1: a building, or maybe you're waiting for a train, like
Speaker 1: a subway train. You just think I should jump, Well,
Speaker 1: it never quite manifests itself as I should jump I
Speaker 1: find that for me, it manifests itself as what if
Speaker 1: I did jump? Like and I it's this intense contemplation
Speaker 1: of the choice I have in the matter, and the
Speaker 1: fact that I could if I wanted to fling myself
Speaker 1: off of this cliff, you know, fall into the Grand Canyon,
Speaker 1: go in front of a train, or a variant of
Speaker 1: this thing I that I encountered atop of the Empire
Speaker 1: State Building. Have you ever been up to the top
Speaker 1: of the Empire State Building? You know that they have
Speaker 1: these It's it's like being in a cage match. There's
Speaker 1: no you would have There's basically no way you could
Speaker 1: throw yourself off the Empire State Building, at least not
Speaker 1: on a whim. It would take it would take some
Speaker 1: some some planning, and some effort. But what I did
Speaker 1: find myself struggling with was what if I threw my
Speaker 1: wallet over the side to the street below. That would
Speaker 1: be horrible, And so I ended ended up wrestling with
Speaker 1: that possibility, which is kind of like throwing a piece
Speaker 1: of your life over the side. Yeah, isn't there that adage?
Speaker 1: And I think how stuff works is even done an
Speaker 1: article on this about like what happens when you throw
Speaker 1: a penny over the side of the Empire State Building,
Speaker 1: and I think there's the urban legend is that it
Speaker 1: can kill a person. Yeah, I don't know what the
Speaker 1: science is that I seem to recall. It doesn't quite
Speaker 1: pan out. It's it's been a while since I've looked
Speaker 1: at that one, but I still I'm not gonna go
Speaker 1: throwing pennies over I feel like my wallet would maybe
Speaker 1: just balk somebody in the head probably with my wallet
Speaker 1: would probably not go through somebody. Yeah. Well. The other
Speaker 1: one of these is uh captured in Woody Ellen's Any
Speaker 1: Hall movie when Christopher Walkin is talking about how he
Speaker 1: wants to swerve into traffic and at night and he's
Speaker 1: looking at the other headlights coming the other way. They're
Speaker 1: all related. Uh, And this is you out there are
Speaker 1: probably going like this is real morbid guys, where are
Speaker 1: you going with this? Uh? This is an actual phenomenon,
Speaker 1: so so common that it has multiple names, and there
Speaker 1: has been a major study done on it. Um, so
Speaker 1: we're going to cover that today. It is the sudden
Speaker 1: feeling that we want to put ourselves in a harm's way.
Speaker 1: Examples of this often include the urge to jump off
Speaker 1: a top building or to veer into oncoming traffic. The
Speaker 1: French term for it is pel dou vede, which means
Speaker 1: call of the Void, which I really like. And that's
Speaker 1: how I how I came to this was there's this
Speaker 1: pretty brutal hardcore band that I like called Call of
Speaker 1: the Void, and I was typing it into Google the
Speaker 1: other day and an article on this phenomenon popped up,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I've never heard of this before.
Speaker 1: And then I said to you, let's let's talk about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I knew about it. I've had the experience,
Speaker 1: but I feel like most people have had the experience.
Speaker 1: I would I would definitely like the here from anyone
Speaker 1: who has not had some variant of this. Now, you
Speaker 1: mentioned that it's called often referred to as Call of
Speaker 1: the Void, and some of our listeners might have recommended.
Speaker 1: The reading at the top of the episode is being
Speaker 1: from Jack London's nineteen three novel The Call of the Wild.
Speaker 1: I like how this particular bit from that novel, certainly
Speaker 1: that this is the main part of the novel that
Speaker 1: always sticks out in my mind because it gets into
Speaker 1: similar territory as the Call of the Void. The idea
Speaker 1: that with a split decision, you could bring being into
Speaker 1: un being. In this case, it's the dog and really
Speaker 1: the but the dog also um represents much about the
Speaker 1: central character in the Call in the Wild as well.
Speaker 1: What's strange about it is it's like the ultimate form
Speaker 1: of control when you feel like you don't have control,
Speaker 1: right It's like this ultimate expression where you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: like you think I don't have control over anything. The
Speaker 1: one thing I can totally control is I could just
Speaker 1: kill myself right now if I wanted to, which is
Speaker 1: horrible to think about, but we're gonna get into it.
Speaker 1: There's like a lot of theories as to where this
Speaker 1: thing comes from. I don't know about you, but like
Speaker 1: when I've experienced it, I feel it in the pit
Speaker 1: of my stomach, like it's like a full body sensation.
Speaker 1: It's not just like a little like thought like I
Speaker 1: wonder if I if I jumped, you know, there's this weird, yeah,
Speaker 1: this visceral kind of vibe from it. It's it's not
Speaker 1: so much like you're having to hold yourself down, but
Speaker 1: sometimes you do kind of I have been in places
Speaker 1: where I feel like I kind of want to squat
Speaker 1: down and maybe touch the ground a little bit, even
Speaker 1: though I'm not near the edge now. One thing I
Speaker 1: will say is that I have not felt this recently
Speaker 1: because I find that when I am in places with
Speaker 1: ledges or anything of that nature, I tend to be
Speaker 1: there with my wife and son, and so I'm more
Speaker 1: concerned about them falling out off, especially my son being
Speaker 1: like just four going on five. He falls off the
Speaker 1: stuff all the time, oh like he and he ends
Speaker 1: up generating all of my anxiety about people falling or jumping,
Speaker 1: And then I don't I guess I have less room
Speaker 1: for myself. Sure, well, that makes sense based on the
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance theory that we're going to talk about today,
Speaker 1: that that your parental authority would like override, override the
Speaker 1: biological like brain stuff that's going on theoretically here that
Speaker 1: causes it. There's a whole theory as to what causes
Speaker 1: this seems close, But let's go through all this stuff
Speaker 1: and kind of figure it out. Before we do that,
Speaker 1: I wanted to add a John paulse Sartra observed this
Speaker 1: decades ago, and he said that this emotion is unsettling
Speaker 1: because it creates an unnerving, shaky sensation of not being
Speaker 1: able to trust one's own instincts, which is which is
Speaker 1: really interesting. Like I hadn't even thought about it as
Speaker 1: that that like you feel like, so I just expressed
Speaker 1: it as a thing where it's like you feel like
Speaker 1: you're in total control. But then his aversion of it
Speaker 1: is you're totally out of control. Well, it's kind of
Speaker 1: the you know it's It's another reason I like the
Speaker 1: call the wild quote here because he talks about this
Speaker 1: thing being splendid and terrible at the same time, and
Speaker 1: to to stand it's it's like standing at the edge
Speaker 1: of the Grand Canyon, Like the Grand Canyon is an
Speaker 1: awesome experience to see that much emptiness, but it's also
Speaker 1: you feel vulnerable and if you're gonna go and you
Speaker 1: want to go in style, that seems like that would
Speaker 1: be kind of like a beautiful way to do it. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of people have Yeah, I mean, I'm not suicidal.
Speaker 1: Don't think that audience, And we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: suicidal thoughts and relation to this as well, because it's
Speaker 1: a pretty serious topic. But I could there there's something,
Speaker 1: there is a beauty to it, and um, this is
Speaker 1: where Mr Sigmund Freud comes in and we'll we'll we'll
Speaker 1: talk about that as well, But first let's look at
Speaker 1: the more recent study. This is really the hinge of
Speaker 1: this episode. So inven a team of scientists from Florida
Speaker 1: State University decided to investigate it. And this was in
Speaker 1: the Journal of Effective Disorders. And the authors of the
Speaker 1: paper were led by a woman named Jennifer Hayes. She's
Speaker 1: was a graduate student and she's currently faculty at Notre Dame.
Speaker 1: UH and this was at f s us Joiner Lab.
Speaker 1: And you might be going, why would anybody want to
Speaker 1: study this? Like, where would this come from? Well, the
Speaker 1: idea here is that it could shine light on the
Speaker 1: whole idea of a death drive, that some suicides are
Speaker 1: impulsive and have nothing to do with depression. UH. And
Speaker 1: that was interesting. I hadn't really thought of that before myself,
Speaker 1: but I could reading up more on Freud's death drive theory,
Speaker 1: I guess I could see where that came from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do have to say for my own part, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'll entertain the possibility that that exists, but I'm
Speaker 1: rather I'm rather doubtful that suicide is can occur or
Speaker 1: does occur in any significant to any significant degree, completely
Speaker 1: isolated from depression or willful intent. Yeah, like the idea
Speaker 1: that someone's just like, oh I could jump off the
Speaker 1: into the canyon and die, let's do it, bam, done,
Speaker 1: the end the deal. Like, I can see the impulse
Speaker 1: being a factor if there is already some underlying depression,
Speaker 1: or if one already had some sort of a plan
Speaker 1: in mind, and this is just like this is the
Speaker 1: day that I act on it. Yeah, So you know,
Speaker 1: I think that it's worth saying, like, uh, from my
Speaker 1: subjective experience, like I said, I myself am not suicidal,
Speaker 1: and I haven't. I've had what we will refer to
Speaker 1: later as suicidal thinking, but I've never had suicidal planning.
Speaker 1: And there's a major difference, right and and and this
Speaker 1: is sort of the call of the void, the high
Speaker 1: the high place phenomenon. Those are those are versions of
Speaker 1: suicidal thinking. That's about as far as it's gone for me, right, Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: suicidal thinking. I feel like it's often tied into with
Speaker 1: the romance suicide because we have so many stories and
Speaker 1: you know these generally are very lopsided in their presentation
Speaker 1: of suicide. Uh, the display it is this this noble
Speaker 1: poetic thing that doomed dreamers and doomed lovers Romeo and Julia, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: But I we've all been teenagers, so we've all had
Speaker 1: moments where we're like, oh, my life is so tragic,
Speaker 1: and you might envision this scenario. But there's to your point,
Speaker 1: there's a difference between envisioning it, daydreaming about it, and
Speaker 1: UH and thinking about what everyone will say when you're gone,
Speaker 1: versus actually putting some sort of plan in place. But
Speaker 1: for our listeners, I do want to establish up front,
Speaker 1: you know, I have experience with people who were suicidal
Speaker 1: or have committed suicide, so I am sympathetic to that,
Speaker 1: and I don't want this episode to feel like it's callous.
Speaker 1: This is connected to that, but it's a The suicidal
Speaker 1: thinking that goes along with call of the void syndrome
Speaker 1: seems to be a are cry from the actual act
Speaker 1: of it UM and but we're gonna get into that
Speaker 1: at the end of the episode. So back to this research.
Speaker 1: They found that more than thirty percent of the people
Speaker 1: they talked to said they had experienced this UH phenomenon
Speaker 1: at least once, and the researchers refer to it in
Speaker 1: their study as high place phenomenon, they weren't taking into
Speaker 1: account like throwing yourself in front of a train or
Speaker 1: driving an oncoming traffic uh. They were also curious whether
Speaker 1: it was related to a person's history of suicidal thinking,
Speaker 1: and from their findings they found that it is common
Speaker 1: even among people who have no depression or suicidal thinking history.
Speaker 1: So this was their methodology. They asked four and thirty
Speaker 1: one college students whether and how often they had experienced
Speaker 1: the urge to jump off of tall things. Then they
Speaker 1: examined their depressive symptoms in their history of suicidal thoughts.
Speaker 1: They also took a look at how sensitive these people
Speaker 1: were to anxiety, as well as how fearful they were
Speaker 1: of anxiety symptoms such as an elevated heartbeat and shortness
Speaker 1: of breath. Among those who had never had suicidal thoughts,
Speaker 1: still seventeen percent of them had experienced the urge to jump.
Speaker 1: Among those who had experienced with sidal thoughts, fifties six
Speaker 1: percent experienced it. So that's significant if it lines up.
Speaker 1: Now we'll talk there's a little bit of methodology stuff
Speaker 1: with this, this that I've calling the question. The researchers
Speaker 1: were also interested specifically in the sensitivity to reactive safety
Speaker 1: signals and if that corresponded to a higher likelihood of
Speaker 1: experiencing the urge to jump. So to mark this reactivity,
Speaker 1: they looked at levels of anxiety sensitivity, such as a
Speaker 1: faster heartbeat. Uh. This was because previous research suggested that
Speaker 1: high anxiety sensitivity is actually tied to a tendency for
Speaker 1: us as human beings to misinterpret random, innocuous bodily sensations
Speaker 1: as being dangerous. Yeah, we we tend to. We tend
Speaker 1: to make that air and cognition, you know, because there
Speaker 1: is a survival advantage in jumping to conclusions rather than
Speaker 1: not making any conclusions. One gets you eaten by a tiger.
Speaker 1: One just means you go about your daily life constantly
Speaker 1: looking for the tiger that might eave Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I've actually experienced this, I'd say in like the last
Speaker 1: two weeks, where like I'll get up and I'll read
Speaker 1: about current events in the news, and my heart will
Speaker 1: start beating rapidly and I'll go, oh, this is is
Speaker 1: there something wrong? Do I need to go see my doctor?
Speaker 1: And I realized it's anxiety. It's it's not normal, but
Speaker 1: I'm having a normal anxious reaction to the things that
Speaker 1: I'm reading about, right, But then my thought is like, oh,
Speaker 1: what if I have a heart attack? You know, So
Speaker 1: this is kind of along those lines where the idea
Speaker 1: is that we misinterpret these random bodily sensations is being dangerous. Okay.
Speaker 1: So their studies finding was that yes, more sensitivity to
Speaker 1: anxiety was related to the frequency of the urge to jump,
Speaker 1: especially in people who had never experienced suicidal thoughts. They
Speaker 1: also interpreted this as people without a history of suicidal
Speaker 1: thoughts as being more sensitive to bodily cues that they
Speaker 1: could misinterpret. So that's interesting. So if you've never experienced
Speaker 1: suicidal thoughts, they're saying, you're more likely to interpret say
Speaker 1: like your heart beating faster as as something of danger.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. Yeah, I mean it's kind of like if
Speaker 1: you if you've ever had an anxiety attack, if you
Speaker 1: if you have, if you have one and they're rare
Speaker 1: than the first time you have one, it can be
Speaker 1: extremely alarmente. If you think, oh, oh goodness, I'm about
Speaker 1: to die now. So the study ultimately translates as follows.
Speaker 1: People with high anxiety sensitivity were more likely to have
Speaker 1: higher chances of suicidal thoughts. Okay, that makes sense. So
Speaker 1: if you're sensitive to the bodily reactions and you're worried
Speaker 1: about being anxious, then you're more likely to have suicidal thoughts.
Speaker 1: But subsequently, you were also more likely to report experiencing
Speaker 1: this call of the void phenomenon. So that's interesting. Why
Speaker 1: do we experience this though Like? Where is this coming from? Well,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break and we come back. We'll
Speaker 1: dive into that very question. All right, we're back. So
Speaker 1: one theory about this call of the void phenomenon or
Speaker 1: the idea of high place phenomenon, is that there's something
Speaker 1: going on with a temporary uncoupling of our different perceptual
Speaker 1: systems in our brains. It's kind of like cognitive dissonance. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The idea, and this come up comes up all the
Speaker 1: time on the podcast, the idea that you have two
Speaker 1: different ideas, two different inclinations in your mind, and they
Speaker 1: conflict with each other. So the classic, the easy one
Speaker 1: to go through here, of course, is oh, I I
Speaker 1: think homosexuality is wrong, but I have homosexual thoughts in
Speaker 1: my head. These two do not go with one another,
Speaker 1: um and this generates it's kind of a friction in
Speaker 1: the mind exactly. So their theory was that when you're
Speaker 1: standing on the edge of a skyscraper, your brain has
Speaker 1: fast fear circuitry, that's what they called it. Obviously it's
Speaker 1: not circuitry that and this may alert you of danger,
Speaker 1: just the danger of hey, you could fall, But then
Speaker 1: our perceptual system in our brain is slower than our
Speaker 1: fear system, and that kicks in afterwards and it makes
Speaker 1: you realize there's actually no danger. So to make sense
Speaker 1: of the safety signal, our brain mixes this up as
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance and we assume we want to jump, which
Speaker 1: is why people get confused by this. So this is interesting.
Speaker 1: So individuals who are experiencing this are not necessarily suicidal. Instead,
Speaker 1: it seems to reflect their sensitivity to internal cues affirming
Speaker 1: their actual will to live. So that lines up with
Speaker 1: what we're saying earlier that they're sensitive to like oh,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling anxious or oh I'm feeling depressed or whatever.
Speaker 1: So it makes sense that they would be more sensitive
Speaker 1: to their uh, both their fear system and their perception system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do like how the main idea here is that
Speaker 1: you're safe, but you're still taking in the censury data
Speaker 1: that says you're not safe. And I think that we
Speaker 1: we actually get a little bit of this when we
Speaker 1: watch a particularly terrifying video like we've all, especially within
Speaker 1: the age of go pro. I'm sure everyone has seen
Speaker 1: like base jumping, crazy skiing videos, stuff with great heights,
Speaker 1: or people climbing up antennas. And you watch it and
Speaker 1: you couldn't be more safe watching it in your you know,
Speaker 1: living room, in your office, on your phone or your
Speaker 1: personal computer. But you feel a visceral, you know, and
Speaker 1: if it's probably empathic, but also you're taking in certain
Speaker 1: sense data about a dangerous environment and you can't help
Speaker 1: it feel part of that. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting, and
Speaker 1: I think I'm leaning towards agreeing with this theory. But
Speaker 1: let's remember that this study, there's only one study on
Speaker 1: this as far as I can tell, and it isn't conclusive. Um,
Speaker 1: their explanation is simply theoretical and it doesn't have neurological evidence. Uh.
Speaker 1: The methodology also has some weaknesses, so let's acknowledge those.
Speaker 1: First of all, they only used university students, and let's
Speaker 1: be honest, university students are not representative of humanity, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it tends to be a profile of a very specific
Speaker 1: socio economic, racial division of society. Yeah. And the volunteers
Speaker 1: themselves were confessing, well, they may have misremembered their experience
Speaker 1: or even falsely reported it. So that doesn't mean the
Speaker 1: studies flawed. It just means we need more research. Um.
Speaker 1: So a proposal for this is to actually conduct an
Speaker 1: experiment where scientists would have to take subjects and position
Speaker 1: them at different high It's to test at what elevation
Speaker 1: they begin having the thought to jump. Um. And there's
Speaker 1: another explanation that goes along I think with what you
Speaker 1: were saying about the watching those videos, which is that
Speaker 1: it could simply be connected to our thrill of not
Speaker 1: buckling under fear, which is a kind of cognitive dissonance. Um.
Speaker 1: This is the same reason why we go to haunted houses, right,
Speaker 1: both real and uh, you know, fun haunted houses. But
Speaker 1: like think about like when you're a little kid, uh
Speaker 1: and somebody says, let's go that house over there is haunted,
Speaker 1: I dare you to go into it, Right, It's kind
Speaker 1: of the same vibe. Uh. And then subsequently you go
Speaker 1: to something like I don't know. Our version is another
Speaker 1: world here in Atlanta. You go to that, you know
Speaker 1: somebody's gonna jump out with a fake chainsaw and try
Speaker 1: to scare you. But the thrill of overcoming that fear
Speaker 1: is part of why you go and pay money to
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, I mean it feels you with endorphins.
Speaker 1: You're you're very much living in the moment. People who
Speaker 1: aren't into meditation or yoga still might go to a
Speaker 1: haunted house or watch a scary movie, and that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of meditative in a sense. It puts you in
Speaker 1: the now. It's It's probably another reason why jump scares
Speaker 1: are so successful in horror films, right, there's an addiction
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, And it's simple and it works, and
Speaker 1: it ties into our basic evolutionary state to be on
Speaker 1: the lookout for the tiger that jumps out of the grass. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a no take on all of this, and it
Speaker 1: ties in I think nicely to what you said about
Speaker 1: the varying heights. At what height does it kick in?
Speaker 1: For my own part, I feel like there is definitely
Speaker 1: a difference between any call of the void that occurs
Speaker 1: at at lower heights as opposed to like truly awesome
Speaker 1: heights like Grand Canyon, cliff Edge type he total obliteration. Yeah,
Speaker 1: total obliteration, I think is the thing because it's such,
Speaker 1: it's such a it would be such a drastic choice. Okay,
Speaker 1: it would be such a choice between life and and
Speaker 1: and I don't know. I almost to say death like
Speaker 1: puts too much of an atmospheric twist on it, but
Speaker 1: more like between being an un being and I think
Speaker 1: this is I keep thinking this is the two roads
Speaker 1: diverge in a Yellow Woods approach. Um. So in the
Speaker 1: Choose your Own Adventure book that is life, we encounter
Speaker 1: plenty of forking paths, right, but many of these are
Speaker 1: hardly choices at all. I mean, on some level, we
Speaker 1: all choose whether they're going to go to work this
Speaker 1: morning or find a liquor store and drink our purchase
Speaker 1: in the woods behind the Yeah, I think, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean for most of us, a lot of people struggle
Speaker 1: with that every morning. Well, some people realistically do. No
Speaker 1: I'm not, I'm not being sarchotetica, but but for many
Speaker 1: of us, it's not really a choice. Like the things
Speaker 1: we do are the things we do. We have this
Speaker 1: pattern and there's really this is where we get into
Speaker 1: that idea that we're not really making choices and more
Speaker 1: if at all, however, there are choices that are more
Speaker 1: real than others, where two paths of equal weight and
Speaker 1: possibility are presented and uh, and what is weightier than
Speaker 1: the old to be or not to be? The choice
Speaker 1: between being and unding that stands before us when we
Speaker 1: stand at the edge of a great expanse. So it's
Speaker 1: not so much that we're tempted, but that our path
Speaker 1: choosing brain can't help but engage in one of its
Speaker 1: many cognitive superpowers, cognitive superpower that we all possess and
Speaker 1: uh and used to thrive. And this is a chronosthesia,
Speaker 1: which is also known as mental time travel. So this
Speaker 1: entails our ability to be aware of our past and
Speaker 1: future and to envision multiple possible futures before us. So
Speaker 1: it's the key to our survival. But it's also the
Speaker 1: reason you might listen to NPR in the morning and
Speaker 1: mentally time travel to the dawn of the Third World War.
Speaker 1: So it's that anxiety, Yeah, the anxiety. Anxiety comes out
Speaker 1: and you feel it in your body. So in that
Speaker 1: moment in the car listening to NPR, we're forced to
Speaker 1: wonder what what we're capable of, what we're willing to
Speaker 1: lose to gain, And on some level, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the you know, the scene in the Old Testament
Speaker 1: with Abraham raising that dagger up in the sky and
Speaker 1: then above his son Isaac, and it's just a will
Speaker 1: the hand of the angel come in time to spare him? Right? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: looking to something beyond, which gets into that Freudian aspect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's another possible explanation for it. I tend to
Speaker 1: feel like we've got some of this, definitely a part
Speaker 1: of it. But I also think the cognitive dissonance argument
Speaker 1: is also very valid, and it does like we've talked
Speaker 1: before on the show about how situations of cognitive dissonance
Speaker 1: often lend themselves well to supernatural experience. Let's not just
Speaker 1: say actual supernatural occurrence, but the experience of something supernatural
Speaker 1: to us, especially in our demon possession exorcism Matters, aism
Speaker 1: episode that is hugely tied to cognitive dissonance. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: when you get down to it, like the the idea
Speaker 1: of of encountering the choice between being and unbing this
Speaker 1: this kind of panicky pondering over to what extent you
Speaker 1: have free will, old to what extent you have control
Speaker 1: over your fate. I mean that is that's pretty supernatural
Speaker 1: sounding to me. Yeah. Yeah, Well this is a good
Speaker 1: opportunity for us to get into a guy who, let's
Speaker 1: be honest, in some situations, was quasi supernatural. Uh. And
Speaker 1: his name was Sigmund Freud. Uh. So Freud after a
Speaker 1: lot of his better known principles UH connected this to well,
Speaker 1: the phenomenon to an idea that sometimes is referred to
Speaker 1: as a death wish, although that just calls to mind
Speaker 1: Charles Bronson for me. But it is referred to as
Speaker 1: the death drive, articulated in his nineteen essay Beyond the
Speaker 1: Pleasure Principle, and this describes a drive in all of
Speaker 1: us towards self destruction and a return to the inorganic. Now,
Speaker 1: I used a paper by Joanne Faulkner on the subject
Speaker 1: to sort of see unpas package this. Now. She argues
Speaker 1: that the death drive is when Freud departs from scientific
Speaker 1: methodology entirely, and it articulates what he thought of as
Speaker 1: higher functions in the psyche that weren't necessarily empirical. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this is why I say, like we're getting into
Speaker 1: supernatural territory here. Freud thought this was beyond science. Um,
Speaker 1: it's highly speculative and it's not grounded in scientific perspective.
Speaker 1: But Freud's idea was that the death drive circumvented our
Speaker 1: pleasure in an effort to undo a person as an
Speaker 1: organic whole, and so as such it gave us both
Speaker 1: pleasure and discomfort. I can sort of see where he's
Speaker 1: coming from here based on what we were previously talking
Speaker 1: about with like, I don't know, scares right, Like it's
Speaker 1: both pleasurable and uncomfortable. But his idea, of course, being Freud,
Speaker 1: there has to be this model framework to that everything
Speaker 1: fits within, and it was that the death drive was
Speaker 1: the opposite of what he called the life drive or
Speaker 1: the libido. And while the libido attaches itself to others
Speaker 1: and creates ties of affection, the death drive destroys relationships
Speaker 1: and strives for disintegration. So if the libido manifests insects,
Speaker 1: the death drive manifests in aggression, and if this is
Speaker 1: directed inward, it could result in suicide. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Does the death drive lead to what we today understand
Speaker 1: as depression? Right? Like Freud didn't really have a grasp
Speaker 1: on that the way we do now. It's possible if
Speaker 1: it's directed inward, I guess. But in fact, some Eastern
Speaker 1: philosophy indicates that self centered acts maybe a form of
Speaker 1: this kind of self destruction, That selfishness itself isolates us
Speaker 1: from others, leads us to not having support. So maybe
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of a connection between depression and
Speaker 1: death drive. I've I don't know. I'm not on board
Speaker 1: with this. I see how it could sort of make
Speaker 1: sense at the time, and it's connected to thoughts that
Speaker 1: we're having. But huh, what is interesting you mentioned the
Speaker 1: Eastern philosophies. It is interesting to think of self destruction
Speaker 1: perhaps is it's not merely well, let's say, to to
Speaker 1: take self destruction and think of it in terms of
Speaker 1: of of the of of the wheel of sam Sara
Speaker 1: and the different states and the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: you're reincarnated into two upper and lower forms. Yeah, one
Speaker 1: of the realms is that of the hungry ghosts, where
Speaker 1: one is just you know, constantly grasping for something and
Speaker 1: and and unable to to fill yourself with it. And
Speaker 1: and there's another realm, which is more of the hell room.
Speaker 1: And this is where I feel like things really line
Speaker 1: up with this idea of death drive just this, you know, rageful, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, assault on the things that anger you. I
Speaker 1: can give you like a personal version of this that
Speaker 1: I experience. And this might be a little bit t
Speaker 1: m I, but um I often I'm compelled by the
Speaker 1: urge to just go be somewhere in complete isolation. Like
Speaker 1: I think when I when I have this urge, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I like a like a rundown motel in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere, off of a highway somewhere, right, and I'll
Speaker 1: just sitting there for a week. Like there's something about
Speaker 1: that that's just very compelling to me. And I don't
Speaker 1: want to destroy myself. I don't want to commit suicide,
Speaker 1: but there's something about it that that draws me there. Right.
Speaker 1: And I think based on what you're talking about here,
Speaker 1: so there's a similar idea here, right, Like if you
Speaker 1: believe in reincarnation and you think yourself, well, if I die,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be reincarnated, possibly as a lower life form. Right,
Speaker 1: there's something kind of zen about that, Right, There's something
Speaker 1: kind of relaxing about the idea of like I'll come
Speaker 1: back as a toad. Let's just live life as a toad,
Speaker 1: and I won't have as many concerns to bear. It's true, yeah, now,
Speaker 1: but I like this idea that you brought up here too,
Speaker 1: because it also brings to mind like what each of
Speaker 1: us are. So we're certainly we're we're an organism that's
Speaker 1: that's alive. We're also an organism that's is generally moving
Speaker 1: in various uh, social spheres. And you have all of
Speaker 1: these kind of like invisible spider webs of social obligation
Speaker 1: all around us. And so to just to walk away
Speaker 1: from all of that for say a week and go
Speaker 1: to this cabin in the woods, you are not necessarily
Speaker 1: destroying yourself, but you might be doing damage to these
Speaker 1: various social spider webs that are that have bound you
Speaker 1: up totally. And I can see where it would be
Speaker 1: at once liberating to walk away from all of those,
Speaker 1: uh and then but then at the same time many
Speaker 1: would argue, well, that is self destructive. You were doing
Speaker 1: damage to these social structures that had helped maintain you. Yeah, exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's compelling to write. The pop culture example of
Speaker 1: this that drew me in the most and my wife
Speaker 1: immediately recognized it when we saw this, and she's like,
Speaker 1: you love this, don't you was And spoilers for this
Speaker 1: TV show if you don't want to, you might learn
Speaker 1: something you don't want to know about Breaking Bad here.
Speaker 1: But in Breaking Bad, there's a point where the main
Speaker 1: character it goes in hiding to New Hampshire for a
Speaker 1: year and he just lives in a small cottage with
Speaker 1: nothing but like, you know, canned food and newspapers for
Speaker 1: a year and he just sits there and thinks on
Speaker 1: what he's done and sleeps and eats and he just
Speaker 1: is and he's entrapped by snow when we find him.
Speaker 1: And I saw it and I was just like, oh god,
Speaker 1: that that seems like the best vacation ever to me,
Speaker 1: but at the cost of all of his social relationships,
Speaker 1: which is sort of the point in the show. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, this reminds me a lot of a Warren
Speaker 1: Zevon song. That's when I when I have this feeling,
Speaker 1: I'll play this song and listen to his up splendid isolation.
Speaker 1: It's great because the lyrics are basically rolling through these
Speaker 1: three different through or four different scenarios that he is
Speaker 1: craving like I want to live on the Upper east
Speaker 1: Side and never go down in the street, you know,
Speaker 1: put tinfoil up on the window. I want to live
Speaker 1: in the desert like Georgia O'Keefe. You know these kind
Speaker 1: of scenarios where um, we're we're Laren is talking about
Speaker 1: just walking away from everything and just uh encapsulating himself
Speaker 1: in uh in in in total isolation and and ultimately
Speaker 1: kind of self destructive self centeredness, because he ends up
Speaker 1: like making comparisons to UH to Neverland Ranch interesting, you know,
Speaker 1: locking yourself up in your own private disney sort of thing.
Speaker 1: While I never put tinfoil on my window, but in
Speaker 1: my twenties I have to admit, Uh, I took cardboard
Speaker 1: and nailed it up over all the windows in my
Speaker 1: bedroom just because like I wanted complete and utter darkness
Speaker 1: in there. Did you have a black light poster? No? No,
Speaker 1: I didn't missed opportunity mushroom wizards. Well, back to this
Speaker 1: freud thing, I think it reeks of the subjective. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit of magical thinking, which is fun, but
Speaker 1: most people in this realm, in this discipline, think of
Speaker 1: it as being eccentric. Regardless it does apply to depression.
Speaker 1: If you understand that there's an innate voice that wishes
Speaker 1: for death and destruction, well that's that's helpful, right at
Speaker 1: least in therapy you can help separate that and distance
Speaker 1: yourself from those thoughts, and that takes away their power
Speaker 1: and allows you to challenge them and minimize them and
Speaker 1: disregard them. So there's something to that. People who have
Speaker 1: just like outright dismiss Freud. I'm sort of in the middle, like,
Speaker 1: I don't buy it a hundred percent of the time,
Speaker 1: but I do think that there's some value and that
Speaker 1: he helped the profession sort of edge along slow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I always come back to my my lens analogy,
Speaker 1: where what I would I want to walk around with
Speaker 1: with the Freud lens in place all the time, with
Speaker 1: my Freud goggles on all the time. No, I would not,
Speaker 1: But I do find it is helpful in varying scenarios
Speaker 1: to pull the the Freud lens down over my own
Speaker 1: vision of my own worldview and think, oh, well, how
Speaker 1: might this apply to the current scenario, What does what
Speaker 1: how does Freud illuminate what's going on here? Well, why
Speaker 1: don't we take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to delve into some actual statistics about suicidal
Speaker 1: thinking that may help us unravel this call of the
Speaker 1: void phenomenon a little more. All Right, we're back. So
Speaker 1: when mental health professionals refer to these call of the
Speaker 1: void moments, they usually call it suicidal ideation. But that
Speaker 1: term seems broad for our p is here today, So
Speaker 1: let's let's try to separate out what the difference might be. Okay,
Speaker 1: In twleven, the CDC conducted a really big study examining
Speaker 1: statistics about suicide, suicidal thinking, uh and um, suicidal preparation,
Speaker 1: and they found that three point seven percent of adults
Speaker 1: in the United States had had suicidal thoughts in just
Speaker 1: the last year. Now, let's put that into perspective. That's
Speaker 1: eight point three million people. That's a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Other studies have placed this even higher, saying that it's
Speaker 1: actually around eight to ten percent of the population. Now
Speaker 1: let's look at the previous study on the high place phenomenon.
Speaker 1: That's not even close to the thirty to fifty percent
Speaker 1: of people who reported that they had experienced that phenomenon. Right,
Speaker 1: So it seems like what we think of as suicidal
Speaker 1: ideation and and high place phenomenon or call of the void,
Speaker 1: those are different. It's is like suggests that there's there's
Speaker 1: some kind of different thought process going on there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And of course with all this, it depends on exactly
Speaker 1: how you're phrasing the question and how the individual on
Speaker 1: the other end views suicidal thoughts, uh, et cetera. I mean,
Speaker 1: because the big thing is like, what does that individual's
Speaker 1: culture say about suicide? Now, even there there's this is
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that we would have to bust
Speaker 1: out in a longer episode, but even within the United
Speaker 1: States that you're going to have varying subsets of people
Speaker 1: that are going to have different ideas about suicide. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that actually plays in these statistics as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: In the c d C report, they actually summarize the
Speaker 1: data on ninety two thousand, two hundred and sixty four respondents.
Speaker 1: But this establishes a difference between having suicidal thoughts and
Speaker 1: actually making plans for a suicide or attempting it. Plans
Speaker 1: and attempts are very different from just thinking about it. Okay,
Speaker 1: the estimate it's very based on a couple of things,
Speaker 1: sociodemographic factors as well, as the region of the country
Speaker 1: that you live in. So what you're just saying here
Speaker 1: we go. Suicidal thoughts were higher among young adults between
Speaker 1: the ages of eighteen to twenty nine than they were
Speaker 1: for people over thirty. It was also significantly higher for
Speaker 1: women in general. Non Hispanic Whites were the group with
Speaker 1: the highest prevalence of suicidal thoughts, while non Hispanic Asians
Speaker 1: were the group with the lowest suicidal thoughts. And regional factors,
Speaker 1: this is really complicated, but they think it could be
Speaker 1: related to indicators such as divorce rates or resources to
Speaker 1: access like healthcare. Uh, and so the cause and effect
Speaker 1: relationship here is unknown, but there's a there's a couple
Speaker 1: of things like, for instance, adults with less than a
Speaker 1: high school education and those who were unemployed at the
Speaker 1: time were more likely to have these thoughts. Finally, those
Speaker 1: in the mid West and the West were more likely
Speaker 1: to have suicidal thoughts than those in the Northeast in
Speaker 1: the South. Now, I don't know how to unpack that,
Speaker 1: but what you presented sounds sounds close, which is that like,
Speaker 1: various cultures have different beliefs about suicide, right and and
Speaker 1: or like they said that there's like real world factors
Speaker 1: like how much access they have to healthcare or or
Speaker 1: or do they have a job, things like that. So
Speaker 1: there's limitations to this accounting though that we should note
Speaker 1: as well. For instance, previous studies indicate that adults, when
Speaker 1: they're talking about suicidal thoughts, they under report, especially when
Speaker 1: they're talking about when they were adolescents. So if they're
Speaker 1: adults now and they're saying, well, when I was an adolescent,
Speaker 1: this is you know, this is how often I experience
Speaker 1: that they're they they're known to under report. That makes
Speaker 1: sense to me. Yeah, I mean, I mean, you're a
Speaker 1: different person when you're adult when you're an adolescent, so
Speaker 1: you're really kind of teasing apart the thoughts and motivations
Speaker 1: of of a different you entire. So I can see
Speaker 1: where there might be a tendency to say, oh, well
Speaker 1: that that that twenty year old me, that eighteen year
Speaker 1: old me. You didn't know what you're talking about, not
Speaker 1: even serious about that. And this study also didn't account
Speaker 1: for a couple of populations. Uh. First of all, institutionalized populations,
Speaker 1: which would probably have, I mean, we would assume would
Speaker 1: have a higher rate of thinking about suicide, and it
Speaker 1: totally cut out any kind of Native American populations. So
Speaker 1: and that wasn't like on purpose, it was just because
Speaker 1: they didn't have access to enough evidence. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: there is a large factor here that comes down to
Speaker 1: is suicide an open pathway to this individual? Is it
Speaker 1: at all socially acceptable? To what degree is it socially acceptable?
Speaker 1: And that is going to be governed by your culture,
Speaker 1: your history. Indeed, what what books and movies, what beats
Speaker 1: of bits of fiction you know, you you value? These
Speaker 1: are all going to help to skew this idea of
Speaker 1: of whether or not suicide is a practical option for
Speaker 1: an individual. Yeah, but very different from the idea of
Speaker 1: standing on a ledge and looking and just kind of
Speaker 1: getting that urge to just right. So that's why I
Speaker 1: put these statistics in here to sort of just give
Speaker 1: you like, these are very different things, and we can
Speaker 1: see the statistical differences just between these two studies. It's
Speaker 1: also worth remembering all of this stuff for both studies
Speaker 1: is self reported, and that is not a reliable. Now
Speaker 1: to to sort of pull out of the gloomier aspects
Speaker 1: of this this topic, um, I will ask everyone to
Speaker 1: to think about the call of the void you know, uh,
Speaker 1: the situation in which the gravity of disastrous choices. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not merely anxiety inducing or or threatening to one
Speaker 1: sense of self control, but it is exhilarating. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's sort of endorphin pumping high that want to chievee
Speaker 1: from skydiving or even less dangerous smaller acts. And and
Speaker 1: plus what is the true call of the void but
Speaker 1: but a contemplation, however, unformed of oblivion, a complete emptying
Speaker 1: of self, not merely hearing the call of the void,
Speaker 1: but but kind of touching the void, having almost a
Speaker 1: spiritual moment. To go back to that quote from Call
Speaker 1: the Wild again, you know something that is at once
Speaker 1: splendid and terrible. Yeah, And so, as we've been doing
Speaker 1: in some of our episodes recently, we want to make
Speaker 1: sure if you heard this and this like touched upon
Speaker 1: something for you, and and you were hearing these statistics
Speaker 1: or whatever and you thought, well, this this resonates within me,
Speaker 1: and I'm a little concerned. There's actually a nonprofit that
Speaker 1: we would like to throw a line out too, so
Speaker 1: that you, in case you're feeling that way, have some support.
Speaker 1: And it's the National Suicide Prevention lifeline. Uh, it's a
Speaker 1: support line. It's seven, it's free, it's totally confidential. It's
Speaker 1: for people who are in distress. Uh. And it helps
Speaker 1: prevent I sees and provides resources for you and your
Speaker 1: loved ones. So maybe it's not you, Maybe it's somebody
Speaker 1: you know. Uh So the number for that is one
Speaker 1: eight hundred two seven three eight to five five. Again,
Speaker 1: it's one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five.
Speaker 1: All right, And hey, if you want to hear more
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Plow your Mind, if you want
Speaker 1: to check out videos, blog post, you name it links
Speaker 1: out to our social media accounts, head on over to
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's right, and
Speaker 1: I want to hear from you, the audience. Have you
Speaker 1: experienced the call of a void? Have you thought about
Speaker 1: jumping off a tall building or the Grand Canyon or
Speaker 1: maybe even onto a train track before, but of course
Speaker 1: you didn't want to. You just got mixed up with
Speaker 1: these feelings inside. That's that's basically how we all feel nowadays.
Speaker 1: I'm just so mixed up with these feelings inside. Uh,
Speaker 1: let us know. You can let us know on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
Speaker 1: or Instagram, or you can write us at blow the
Speaker 1: mind at how stuff Works dot com, and it close
Speaker 1: out here today. I'm just gonna read another quote. This
Speaker 1: one comes from a book by Robert Graves. Number of
Speaker 1: you may be familiar with him from his more popular
Speaker 1: work such as I Claudius, But he also wrote a
Speaker 1: book called Goodbye to All That, and he talks about
Speaker 1: the Great Woar. He talks about mountain climbing, And this
Speaker 1: is just a quick quote where he talks about climbing.
Speaker 1: My worst climb was on a little wit, the most
Speaker 1: formidable of the precipices, when at a point that needed
Speaker 1: most concentration, a raven circled round the party in great sweeps.
Speaker 1: I found this curiously unsettling, because one climbs only up
Speaker 1: and down or sideways, and the ravens seem to be
Speaker 1: suggesting diverse other possible dimensions of movement, tempting us to
Speaker 1: let go our hold and join him. Well more on
Speaker 1: this and pathans of other topic How Stuff Works up home.
Speaker 1: I think many about f