Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: have you destroyed any watches recently with your electromagnetic field?
Speaker 1: Not recently, but yeah, I have laid waste to several. See.
Speaker 1: Now this was a fairly new thing to me. My
Speaker 1: sister Lucy brought this up to to me. She said,
Speaker 1: have you guys ever looked into this? This, uh, this
Speaker 1: idea that some people cannot wear watches because the watches
Speaker 1: always stop and uh, you know, they'll they'll they'll try
Speaker 1: out of risk watch. Within a few weeks, it stops,
Speaker 1: get another one, it stops. And they are essentially a
Speaker 1: person who cannot wear them for some natural or supernatural reason.
Speaker 1: But you've been you've been experiencing this your entire lot. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, to be fair, I'm not really someone who
Speaker 1: wears watches, and and so when I did wear them,
Speaker 1: and it's been years now, um, I would go to
Speaker 1: put them on and then they wouldn't work. Fairly recently
Speaker 1: after I put them on. Now memory is fuzzy, and
Speaker 1: I will say that if you don't wear your watches regularly,
Speaker 1: then you're probably apt to put one on that's going
Speaker 1: to die of the batteries about to conk out. So
Speaker 1: that could definitely be an explanation, but it could be
Speaker 1: that I have a crazy electro magnetic field rating radiating
Speaker 1: outward and just shutting everything down. It's what do you think?
Speaker 1: Well as well discuss I tend to air on the
Speaker 1: side of skepticism, but but it's a fascinating copy because
Speaker 1: it is because it's I mean, there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of science mixed in here, a little bit of pseudoscience,
Speaker 1: a little just a bit of just basic psychology going on.
Speaker 1: Like one thing that instantly comes to mind when someone says, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't wear watches because when I wear them, they break,
Speaker 1: It kind of reminds me of someone saying, oh, I
Speaker 1: don't eat spinach because I don't like it. And then
Speaker 1: you want to ask, well, when it is the last
Speaker 1: time you had spinach? Did you have spinach like once
Speaker 1: when you were five and then you boughtened into this
Speaker 1: idea that you don't like it? Or is it like
Speaker 1: a re recurring thing where every time you try spinach
Speaker 1: every day you don't like it. I mean, it's there's
Speaker 1: so many factors that come into play with our experience
Speaker 1: versus our expectation of the world. It's true. And even
Speaker 1: though I know better about the watches, I can't help
Speaker 1: but that to sit there and think. But I even
Speaker 1: got an oscillating watch, and that one also died. Um so,
Speaker 1: But it's true. That's why I think this is so interesting.
Speaker 1: And there's there's a really good observation by Slate writer
Speaker 1: Juliette Lapotitos in her article Really a man can't become
Speaker 1: a magnet on why watch stopping? This myth of watch
Speaker 1: stopping is so pervasive. She says, quote it's both scientific
Speaker 1: seeming since magnetic fields can, after all, interfere with electrical devices,
Speaker 1: and vaguely magical, since magnetic forces operate invisibly. The best
Speaker 1: of both worlds for people who aren't entirely satisfied by
Speaker 1: a materialistic worldview but aren't willing to reject materialism out right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's kind of it's science e superstition, you know,
Speaker 1: and it gives you a you can sort of fool
Speaker 1: yourself into believing it because it sounds possible, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: they're on the surface of things until you start looking
Speaker 1: a little deeper. Well, yeah, I mean, especially when you
Speaker 1: consider that a magnetic field is produced whenever an electrical
Speaker 1: charge is in motion, right, and then we are electrical creatures.
Speaker 1: I mean, the experience of the world that we're having
Speaker 1: right now are our thoughts. Everything. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: this is electronic in nature. I mean, essentially, we're a
Speaker 1: spark inside of a bunch of meat. It's true because
Speaker 1: all of those meat tissues and organs produce specific magnetic fulsations,
Speaker 1: and so this is creating this biomagnetic field. So of course,
Speaker 1: you know, all of this is really interesting material to
Speaker 1: get into. But in order for us to get into it,
Speaker 1: the right way to probably just do a little one
Speaker 1: on one overview of magnetic field because that in and
Speaker 1: of itself is amazing and it's not totally clearly understood
Speaker 1: by scientists yet. Right, So what is what is the
Speaker 1: magnetic field? What is it admitted by Well, the Earth's
Speaker 1: metal core, because it's acting like a giant magnet, and
Speaker 1: it's emanating a magnetic field with two poles. Right, You've
Speaker 1: got the north pole in your south pole, and then
Speaker 1: these two magnetic poles kind of ruffling match where the
Speaker 1: planet's geographic north in south poles lie which mark the
Speaker 1: access on which they were spins. So everything in between
Speaker 1: there is is creating these magnetic fields. And as we
Speaker 1: discussed in the Stuff to Blow Your Kid's Mind video series,
Speaker 1: I mean this actually ends up protecting the planet. I
Speaker 1: means it's highly important just in MS in terms of
Speaker 1: a very basic life can exist on Earth level because
Speaker 1: because not every planet is going to have this though,
Speaker 1: the core situation has to be just right to make
Speaker 1: it happen. Yeah, it's really cool because it's kind of
Speaker 1: like an umbrellas shielding us from everything that you know,
Speaker 1: deep space and the sun is throwing at us right
Speaker 1: Without this, we would be fried meat bags exactly. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: have even become off the ground. Yeah. Um, so that's
Speaker 1: kind of you know, quick insight and how it's working,
Speaker 1: you know, at least um on our planet. But I
Speaker 1: wanted to also talk a little bit more about the
Speaker 1: magnetic field and how humans and animals use them, because
Speaker 1: this again is something that is still trying to be
Speaker 1: figured out by scientists. It's still an amazing thing, the
Speaker 1: magnetic field being able to orient something like the monarch
Speaker 1: butterfly in its navigation. Yeah, butterflies are a great example.
Speaker 1: Various birds, foxes, animals that use the magnetic field for
Speaker 1: navigation purposes. Um, and it continues to be, like you said,
Speaker 1: a fascinating research topic because it's for the most part,
Speaker 1: something we don't get on a biological level. I mean,
Speaker 1: is there is the research shows. I mean there's it's
Speaker 1: not like that these creatures are completely alien and completely
Speaker 1: dissimilar to us, but they are able to tap into
Speaker 1: it and and and and use it in a way
Speaker 1: that we cannot. Well, there's no one mechanism that can
Speaker 1: point to me and say, oh, this is the reason why,
Speaker 1: say a bird or a butterfly can use the magnetic field.
Speaker 1: But there is something called cryptochron homes, and these are
Speaker 1: a bit of a clue for us. These are a
Speaker 1: class of light sensitive proteins found in plants and animals,
Speaker 1: flavor proteins even flavor. Yeah, in humans. It's found uh
Speaker 1: in the retina, the cryptochrome and uh it's been of
Speaker 1: course studied in birds and monarch butterflies. It's very much
Speaker 1: a part of circadian rhythms as well. I mean, so
Speaker 1: it's it's not something where we can again we can
Speaker 1: point to it and say, there you go, this is
Speaker 1: this is here exclusively for electromagnetic field sensibility. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: if you look at it, we're not gonna go into
Speaker 1: it too much because we can do the entire podcast
Speaker 1: on it. Really, but if you look at it in birds,
Speaker 1: the cryptochromes are really helping to um sort of kick
Speaker 1: off this at the quantum level, this whole process and
Speaker 1: the light sensitivity and the magnetic field in birds eyes,
Speaker 1: and it's these sort of changes that are going on
Speaker 1: that helped to detect whether or not the sun is
Speaker 1: in this position and the magnetic field is being sensed
Speaker 1: in this direction. It's really fascinating. But the thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to get to is, uh, Stephen M. Repert. He
Speaker 1: is a neurobiologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School
Speaker 1: and his colleagues Lauren Folly and Robert Gieger have been
Speaker 1: studying these cryptochromes and they fust around with the genes
Speaker 1: of a fly and they found that they fly could
Speaker 1: detect magnetic fields, but only when it's cryptochrome gene within
Speaker 1: good working order. So that given the clue to say,
Speaker 1: this is really important in the detection of magnetic fields,
Speaker 1: and flies, by the way, always a good test subject
Speaker 1: for various genetic tankering. Yeah. So then the researchers subbed
Speaker 1: the fruit flies genes for the monarchs genes and they
Speaker 1: found the same thing. Okay, then they said, what about humans?
Speaker 1: Of course, uh so one of the monarchs to cryptochrome
Speaker 1: genes is similar in its DNA sequence to the human
Speaker 1: cryptochrome gene, because we have it as well. So that
Speaker 1: prompted the idea of seeing whether the human gene too.
Speaker 1: Could we store magnetic sensing to fruit flies whose own
Speaker 1: gene had been knocked out? Yea. So they're using the
Speaker 1: monarch butterfly genes to fix this disabled fruit fly, and
Speaker 1: then they're saying, can we do the same thing, Can
Speaker 1: we fix the fruit fly with human cryptochromes? And they did.
Speaker 1: So that kind of said, all right, if this exists
Speaker 1: in um in a marked butterfly, and this exists in
Speaker 1: fruit flies and this helps them to sense the magnetic field,
Speaker 1: then certainly there's something going on in the human eye
Speaker 1: with these cryptochromes and the magnetic field. So this opened
Speaker 1: up this this whole sort of Pandora's box of questions.
Speaker 1: Um Repard says, of the cryptochrome and the human eye,
Speaker 1: it's beautifully poised to sense light, but we don't know
Speaker 1: if it has the downstream pathways that communicate magnetic information
Speaker 1: to the brain. The possibility exists. So the question becomes,
Speaker 1: you know, are we overstating the cryptochrome and its ability
Speaker 1: to sense the magnetic field or did humans once have
Speaker 1: a more refined ability to sense the magnetic field with cryptochrome? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And to what extent is it possible that we could
Speaker 1: in some cases see the magnetic field or at least
Speaker 1: in some way since it um, Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: in the union of the whole other quandaries about the
Speaker 1: possibility of super sers, people who you know, can see
Speaker 1: the world a little differently, see extra colors. What if
Speaker 1: they can what have a particularly gifted artists is actually
Speaker 1: seeing to some degree, uh, this electromagnetism in the world
Speaker 1: around them. Well, so I immediately start to think about
Speaker 1: trans humanism because it's spent out on our minds a
Speaker 1: lot lately, and I thought, well, this is one of
Speaker 1: these things that you would want to tinker with. Yeah, why,
Speaker 1: I see with our limited vision, when you could you know,
Speaker 1: completely turbo charge everything to where you can see in
Speaker 1: the electromagnetic spectrum as well. All Right, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break, and when we come back more on
Speaker 1: this topic. Alright, we're back. We're talking about our electronic
Speaker 1: brains and our meat bodies. We're talking about people who
Speaker 1: wear watches and claim that they're not your coal. Electronic
Speaker 1: properties make the watches stop, maybe even fall off their hands.
Speaker 1: I tend to imagine it that way, like somebody like
Speaker 1: Julie trying to wear a wristwatch and it just stops
Speaker 1: and just falls completely off your hand. It just bursts
Speaker 1: into planes. H Well, I mean, okay, so let's get
Speaker 1: back to this idea that your brain, your body um
Speaker 1: is pulsing with electricity sort of. I mean it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, like we said that your thoughts in your head,
Speaker 1: this is essentially an electronic um situation, your your nerves.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are electronic signals. I really liked this
Speaker 1: description from a writer named Ferriss Chopra from Scientific American.
Speaker 1: He said, your brain is electric. Tiny impulses constantly raced
Speaker 1: among billions of interconnected neurons, generating an electric field that
Speaker 1: surrounds the brain like an invisible cloud. That's quite poetic,
Speaker 1: but it does talk to this idea that the brain
Speaker 1: is enveloped in these countless overlapping electrical fields and is
Speaker 1: generated by the neural circuits of scores of these communicating neurons.
Speaker 1: And then, uh, the the idea behind this is that
Speaker 1: this week electromagnetic field, because remember it is weak, this
Speaker 1: is not a strong EMF here, that this electromagnetic field
Speaker 1: actually helps the brain's neurons to fire together. So it
Speaker 1: does serve a purpose here. It's not just sort of
Speaker 1: generating electricity because it's working so hard. And then, of
Speaker 1: course we live in a world where they're just constantly
Speaker 1: fields all around us. Are all the devices in our
Speaker 1: house pretty much increasingly so? And to your point, if
Speaker 1: if when we're capable of stopping a watch with one's
Speaker 1: personal electromagnetic field, where would it end where? I mean,
Speaker 1: because how many other devices do we have on our
Speaker 1: bodies at any given point these days? Yeah, you and
Speaker 1: I were talking about it. I mean, the effect of
Speaker 1: the matter is is that we're admitting pretty low levels
Speaker 1: of E MF. So if you're gonna destroy a watch
Speaker 1: with your crazy strong e m F, then you're going
Speaker 1: to destroy everything else in your path. I mean, right now,
Speaker 1: I would even be able to record right because I
Speaker 1: would be knocking out everything in the space. Would be
Speaker 1: like an electronic muggle. I like that. Yeah, yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean our smartphones are normal phones, um, you know,
Speaker 1: little running devices that people have to keep track of
Speaker 1: their exercise, various others cybernetic enhancements that create the more
Speaker 1: and more into our daily lives. But we can't help
Speaker 1: to think that, you know, maybe just maybe there's something
Speaker 1: going on, uh with this E m F and our
Speaker 1: own little field that we're creating around us. And I
Speaker 1: can't help but think of something called the iPod shuffle effect.
Speaker 1: Actually I don't know if it's called the effect, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and call it now. And that's
Speaker 1: this idea that we we begin to see again the
Speaker 1: patterns that don't necessarily exist. But if if I keep
Speaker 1: putting that watch on, you know, intermittently over a seven
Speaker 1: year period and a different watch and they're not working,
Speaker 1: than I began to think, right begin suspect that perhaps
Speaker 1: something fishy is going on with my own E m F,
Speaker 1: Just like if I put my iPod on and it's
Speaker 1: still it seems to me to play the same five
Speaker 1: songs over and over again from the sound of music. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's similar to the I'm not kidding. And
Speaker 1: then some people attach the added level like it's oh,
Speaker 1: it's always playing that song When I do this, you
Speaker 1: get into that area like oh, if you if you
Speaker 1: watch you know, the Wizard of Oz with with the
Speaker 1: Pink Floyd playing that it that it matches up that
Speaker 1: we end up finding the connections and things. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've we've talked to this about about this before. As humans,
Speaker 1: we are just always looking for the patterns and things.
Speaker 1: We're looking for pattern recognition so that we can figure
Speaker 1: out who we are and what we're doing in this world.
Speaker 1: And uh, sometimes we crank it up a little too
Speaker 1: far well, and we attach meaning to things. Right, So
Speaker 1: in the in terms of the shuffle for for your iPod,
Speaker 1: for instance, you're attaching meaning to songs that means something
Speaker 1: to you emotionally, so that sort of amped up, so
Speaker 1: your brain is going to pick out that song the
Speaker 1: sound of music the album for instance, a little bit
Speaker 1: more because it's tuned in because it says, oh, I
Speaker 1: remember that that movie of my youth and this is
Speaker 1: the song about I don't know, yodeling over hills, and
Speaker 1: I get all warm and fuzzy when I hear it. Um,
Speaker 1: you know the same thing with an object with a
Speaker 1: watch if I go to put it on that you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about this with our podcast about objects last week.
Speaker 1: Is that you began to really ascribe a lot of
Speaker 1: meaning to things. Uh, So you can see why it
Speaker 1: would be pretty easy to say, ah, I have this,
Speaker 1: I have this going on. In fact, you may have
Speaker 1: even if you've ever been suspected that you are a
Speaker 1: watch stopper, you might even think that you're someone who
Speaker 1: can turn off and on street lights just by walking
Speaker 1: by them. Yeah, and this is I feel like we've
Speaker 1: all had this happen where you're walking along and you know,
Speaker 1: so that's light went out weird. But and I've never thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I must have I must have done that. Like it
Speaker 1: seems like that would be awfully self centered to me
Speaker 1: to think, oh, wow, a light just went out. That
Speaker 1: must have been me. It's the same sort of thing
Speaker 1: that thinks, oh that stranger looked over in my direction,
Speaker 1: she must think I'm handsome. You know. It's like it's
Speaker 1: it's it seems to have there seems to be a
Speaker 1: self centeredness to it, that the world revolves around me,
Speaker 1: and then I'm somehow affecting things in ways they don't
Speaker 1: really well, you know. And if it's late at night
Speaker 1: and you know, you're just your heels are clacking against
Speaker 1: the concrete and you happen to be approaching a street light,
Speaker 1: it's a very dramatic moment right when it goes out,
Speaker 1: and so you began to think, oh, what's going on,
Speaker 1: and not thinking, oh, that this sodium bulb is near
Speaker 1: it's the end of its life cycle and it's gonna
Speaker 1: you know, turn on and off. Well, you know, you
Speaker 1: we put ourselves in the you know, the mindset of
Speaker 1: our primordical ancestor. I mean when when we're trying to
Speaker 1: figure out if something is is a risk or not
Speaker 1: if something is a threat. I mean, it's on one hand,
Speaker 1: it could be a could be just coincidence, or it
Speaker 1: could be a sign that something bad is going to happen,
Speaker 1: and our brains tend to decide with the possibility that
Speaker 1: there is a reason behind it. It's true, but your
Speaker 1: brain normally doesn't go like, hey, that's that sodium bowl
Speaker 1: that high sodium intensity and you know, the city has
Speaker 1: been using those lately. UM. But that being said, I
Speaker 1: don't want to you know, wholesale poop to the idea
Speaker 1: of E MF in general, because, as you have pointed out,
Speaker 1: they are surrounding us at all times in various ways. UM.
Speaker 1: We get this invisible electromagnetic radiation in the form of
Speaker 1: AM and FM radio waves, visible light, microwaves, UM, cell
Speaker 1: phone towers, electronics appliances are all radiating and em possibly
Speaker 1: as well our cool spring mattress. Yeah. That was an
Speaker 1: amazing study that we ran across. And this was this
Speaker 1: is from two thousand ten Hawburg Independent Research in Sweden,
Speaker 1: UM and also the UH Carol Linska Institute in Sweden,
Speaker 1: and they were looking specifically at at what role are
Speaker 1: box springs are Western box springs may play in UH
Speaker 1: in these electric and electromagnetic fields. Well, this is amplifying
Speaker 1: them serving as basically in antenna for all the electro
Speaker 1: mantictic fields around us and then transferring them directly into
Speaker 1: our bodies while we're sleeping, when then we spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time sleeping. Yeah, I mean this is a
Speaker 1: real detective story. That's what I love about this study
Speaker 1: is that because they came across with this data and
Speaker 1: they said, why is the cancer rate uh ten percent
Speaker 1: higher in the left breast than in the right. And
Speaker 1: this left side bias, by the way, is true for
Speaker 1: both men and women, and it applies also to skin
Speaker 1: cancer um to melanoma. Okay. But then they found that
Speaker 1: in Japan there's no correlation between the rates of melanoma
Speaker 1: and breast cancer. Okay, So that said, why, why, what
Speaker 1: could be going on here? So that's when they figured
Speaker 1: out that, yeah, the coils we're actually and this is
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and quote our Douglass fealties from
Speaker 1: Scientific American because I think this He lays it out
Speaker 1: really well. He says, as we sleep on our coil
Speaker 1: spring mattresses in the West, we are in effect sleeping
Speaker 1: on an antenna that amplifies the intensity of the broadcast
Speaker 1: FM TV radiation. Asleep on these antennas, our bodies are
Speaker 1: exposed to the amplified electromagnetic creation. For a third of
Speaker 1: our lifespans. As we slumber on a metal coil spring mattress,
Speaker 1: a wave of electromagnetic radiation envelops our bodies so that
Speaker 1: the maximum strength of the field develops seventy five above
Speaker 1: the mattress in the middle of our bodies. So what's
Speaker 1: going on here? When you're sleeping on the right side,
Speaker 1: the body's left side will thereby be exposed to field
Speaker 1: strength about twice as strong as what the right side absorbs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and previous research has shown that men and women both
Speaker 1: tend to prefer to sleep on their right side, uh,
Speaker 1: and their various possible reasons for it. For this, one
Speaker 1: being that the that if you sleep on your right side,
Speaker 1: you're reducing the weight stress on the heart. The heart
Speaker 1: is not a heartbeat is not that's allowed? Do I
Speaker 1: sleep on it? Let me see, I tend to sleep
Speaker 1: on my chest at first, and then I then I
Speaker 1: go into a hanging recline position from the ceiling. No. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I do. You know, I never really think
Speaker 1: about it. I tend to wake up one way or
Speaker 1: the other. Well, I understand the less pressure on your
Speaker 1: your heart right sleeping on your right side, But the
Speaker 1: whole thing about not being able to hear your heartbeat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've lived next to a train track, so
Speaker 1: I mean I'm used to that. I'm pretty sure I'm
Speaker 1: used to my heartbeat and it's for I mean, I've
Speaker 1: never been sleck. Sometimes I'll be sleeping my leg feels
Speaker 1: a little weird, all the cats laying, I mean a
Speaker 1: strange position. But I'm never like, Oh, my heart feels
Speaker 1: like it's a bit weird. Maybe I should sift over
Speaker 1: so there's less weight on it. I don't know. Well
Speaker 1: maybe I just always go to bed with a heavy heart.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sorry about that. Um, all right, so you're
Speaker 1: probably saying, like, what's up with Japan? How did they
Speaker 1: figure into all this? Well, yes, in Japan, and most
Speaker 1: beds do not have any sort of metal in them,
Speaker 1: so that's one thing. Um. And then their TV broadcasts
Speaker 1: and does not use the seven to mega hurts frequency
Speaker 1: that's used in western countries. Well, there you go. It's
Speaker 1: a fascinating notion, it is. It is. So that's that's
Speaker 1: a little tidbit about E m F. Again, we could
Speaker 1: go on and on about it because it's fascinating. And
Speaker 1: that's just one sort of example of how you can
Speaker 1: inadvertently create a situation with e mfs. Uh that that
Speaker 1: could be dangerous, But for the most part, we'd like
Speaker 1: to think that we have ms under control. Right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much. Now I would like to launch in a
Speaker 1: little more into debunking watch stopping, just talking about some
Speaker 1: of the other possible reasons do squash it, just to
Speaker 1: just to squash it a little bit. Uh. First of all,
Speaker 1: moisture comes into play, especially with you know, your cheaper watches.
Speaker 1: That's something to keep in mind. It's like, am I
Speaker 1: a am I? Am I a watch stopper or watches
Speaker 1: completely dying on me all the time, and then be
Speaker 1: am I swimming with them? On? Am I going out
Speaker 1: in the rain? A lot? I mean, there are so
Speaker 1: many environmental factors. I'm like it, like it or not.
Speaker 1: Technology can break over time, especially if you're putting in
Speaker 1: it in an environment that is detrimental to the technology.
Speaker 1: Also clumsiness, right, just straight up clumsiness. This thing is
Speaker 1: going on your your your wrist, you know. And if
Speaker 1: you're like me, you talk with your hands. If you're
Speaker 1: like me, you sometimes like just are waving your hands
Speaker 1: a little bit as you walk down the hallway and
Speaker 1: you just completely smash your hand into it like a
Speaker 1: desk or something, just out of sheer clumsiness. So of
Speaker 1: course it's going to break a watch every now and
Speaker 1: then again, especially if you're tend to go towards some
Speaker 1: cheaper models. Yeah, now see that this is building the
Speaker 1: case against me again because I'm a wild gesticulator, right
Speaker 1: sorry watch Uh. And then of course we've we've mentioned coincidence,
Speaker 1: the fact that we just end up ascribing some sort
Speaker 1: of importance to something that is basically just a freak occurrence.
Speaker 1: But then also there's confirmation bias, and this is the
Speaker 1: psychological cognitive science idea that basically we have a tendency
Speaker 1: to search for or interpret information in a way that
Speaker 1: confirms preconceptions. So you get in your mind, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: a watch stopper, then of course you're gonna think about
Speaker 1: that every time a watch stops on you. It's just
Speaker 1: you know, or it gets into the whole magical thinking
Speaker 1: and and uh and weaving superstition in your life. If
Speaker 1: you go into it with this in mind, then yes,
Speaker 1: you're gonna see those patterns, just like if Doe ade Er,
Speaker 1: a female deer comes on your iPod shuffle yet again,
Speaker 1: it seems like and then there's also a sense that
Speaker 1: it might be a self fulfilling prophecy or something that
Speaker 1: is essentially subconscious sabotage or psychological reversal. This is basically
Speaker 1: a situation where your subconscious objective thwarts your conscious objective
Speaker 1: um and generally it's it's more based in stuff like
Speaker 1: on the conscious level, you really want your marriage to work,
Speaker 1: but on your subconscious you're working against it. Or on
Speaker 1: your conscious level, you really want to be successful at work,
Speaker 1: but subconsciously you want to destroy it. Most of the
Speaker 1: studies you look at with this, it tends not to
Speaker 1: revolve around something as petty as your risk watch, but
Speaker 1: you know it could. It could possibly explain what's happening
Speaker 1: subconsciously you hate your watch, or subconsciously you want to
Speaker 1: break stuff, and hey, your watches right there just begging
Speaker 1: for it. Maybe so, maybe so. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: If people really do have electronic electromagnetic fields that are
Speaker 1: breaking watches all the time, what they need to do
Speaker 1: is they need to get themselves an anti magnetic magnetic watch.
Speaker 1: And we fancy, yeah, well, we've we've had these things
Speaker 1: around for oh about sixty years. I believe generally the
Speaker 1: way they've worked in the past is that you have
Speaker 1: shielding involved. One of the more popular watches out there
Speaker 1: that that does this is the Rolex milligoths, which actually
Speaker 1: was developed for scientists working at CERN. Because they're powerful
Speaker 1: magnetic fields all around them. They want to know what
Speaker 1: time it is, so it makes sense let's develop a
Speaker 1: watch that can withstand those pressures. So the Milagos is
Speaker 1: resistant to a thousand gaus, which is a unit of
Speaker 1: magnetic um induction uh. And to put that in the
Speaker 1: frame of reference, a small iron magnet has about a
Speaker 1: hundred gals and a refrigeration magnet has about fifty. So again,
Speaker 1: the existing Rolex millergus takes care of a thousand. And
Speaker 1: there's a new model from Omega called the Omega Sea
Speaker 1: Master Aquacara, and this one um is that is really
Speaker 1: cool as well, cancels out to the field and is
Speaker 1: resistant to a fifteen thousand goals. So in other words,
Speaker 1: you're probably good because you'd have to to to break
Speaker 1: one of these things. You'd have to be wearing it
Speaker 1: through an m r I machine or traveling to a
Speaker 1: neutron star. So I'm guessing that the cost of this
Speaker 1: is going to require Richard Branson dollars. Well, you know
Speaker 1: it's a pricier option, but if you think that you're
Speaker 1: breaking watches all over the place, then maybe it's what
Speaker 1: you need to try out there you go, yeah, or
Speaker 1: go for the Rolex model. I mean shop around. Like
Speaker 1: I said, We've had this technology for years, so uh,
Speaker 1: an answer is out there if you really think that
Speaker 1: you're some sort of electromagnetic freak. Al right, So on
Speaker 1: that note, let's call the robot over and see. Here's
Speaker 1: another example. If you really were um putting out some
Speaker 1: sort of electromagnetic energy that breaks technology, you would have
Speaker 1: broken the robot ages ago. Uh well, he's in a
Speaker 1: fair day cage. Oh well, okay, safe alright. Lena writes
Speaker 1: in and says, Hi, Robert and Julie, I just listened
Speaker 1: to your podcast and wanted to write in with a
Speaker 1: somewhat embarrassing confession. Um oh in the podcast you listened
Speaker 1: to was our Objects of Love podcast about objects attachment,
Speaker 1: et cetera. She says, I'm seventeen years old and I
Speaker 1: still sleep with a Teddy bear. His name is Teddy.
Speaker 1: I've had him since my first Christmas and I don't
Speaker 1: think I've ever spent more than two nights without him
Speaker 1: in my entire life. Sometimes I worry if I will
Speaker 1: have to take him to college with me and my
Speaker 1: roommate will think I'm weird or immature, but I have
Speaker 1: a really strong attachment to him, and he gives me
Speaker 1: a lot of comfort. I even gave him a personality
Speaker 1: and everything. My sister and I used to play with
Speaker 1: stuffed animals a lot. I doubt that you would find
Speaker 1: many eleventh graders like me around still sleeping with a
Speaker 1: teddy bear. But I also have attachments to other objects,
Speaker 1: and I tend to keep things for the memories, even
Speaker 1: if I never look at them again. I'm probably not
Speaker 1: unique in that sense. Though I love the podcast, keep
Speaker 1: up the great work, and thanks Lena cool Well. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's I don't think it's weird at all.
Speaker 1: I don't either. Actually, I was thinking that, you know,
Speaker 1: back to our Imaginary Friends episode and about how we
Speaker 1: postulated that you know, you haven't managing your friends when
Speaker 1: you're little, and then that just gets converted into something
Speaker 1: else when you get older. Maybe you get an attachment
Speaker 1: to a certain character on a television show or a
Speaker 1: movie or a book. Um, but that we tend to
Speaker 1: have these relationships, these fictionalized relationships, so it's in the
Speaker 1: form of a teddy bear. Then I say, you know,
Speaker 1: great I think that that's not not a bad thing.
Speaker 1: I think that's actually a healthy thing. Yeah. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: setting here podcasting without Rubert triceratops in my hand, and
Speaker 1: UH and my sister's and I we had still to
Speaker 1: a certain extent, have a stuffed animal world that we
Speaker 1: refer to the various characters, and we would refer to
Speaker 1: these characters and have them to some extent interact with
Speaker 1: each other, like all through high school and college. Um.
Speaker 1: In fact, up until recently, one of the stuffed ones
Speaker 1: UH named drunk Monkey UH still lived in the trunk
Speaker 1: of my car. See that makes me pine for Cronja,
Speaker 1: which was a stuffed ape that my brother and I have.
Speaker 1: We're a little that lived on Marijuana Island? How did
Speaker 1: how did? Where? Where did? How did Marijuana Island? Inners
Speaker 1: a full babysitter babysitters? Where is Cronja? Now? I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's always been the mystery, like what happened to cronja?
Speaker 1: Every once exactly never to come back. But yeah, that
Speaker 1: comes up every couple of years. My brother and I'll
Speaker 1: be like where did it go? All right, Well, if
Speaker 1: you have something you would like to share with us,
Speaker 1: A be a prize. Teddy bears or apes that live
Speaker 1: in your trunk or on marijuana island, let us know
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you, and particularly if you
Speaker 1: have thoughts about Watch Stop. Do you think you're a
Speaker 1: watch stopper? If so, explain yourself, what's your rationale and
Speaker 1: what do you think about it? Now that we've explained
Speaker 1: some of the properties going on here, both electromagnetic and psychological, uh,
Speaker 1: let us know. You can find us on Facebook and
Speaker 1: you can find us on tumbler. We are stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind on both of those and we also
Speaker 1: have a Twitter account where our handle is blow the
Speaker 1: Mind and you can always drop us a line. A
Speaker 1: blow the mind at discovery dot com for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Does It How Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com