WEBVTT - Mazes 0:00:03.840 --> 0:00:06.720 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:14.040 Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:17.239 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Tickless. And 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:21.200 in this podcast, we are speaking to you from a maze, 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:24.440 from a maze that is being constructed all around us 0:00:24.560 --> 0:00:27.360 here at the house Stuff Works offices in Atlanta. Turns 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:29.360 out we we shuffled around the floor a little bit 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:33.880 and just decided on a whim, let's create a complex 0:00:34.640 --> 0:00:38.240 architectural structure all around us. I can hear them building 0:00:38.240 --> 0:00:41.519 it even now, making it even more complicated. Uh so 0:00:41.560 --> 0:00:43.360 we may not be able to make our way back 0:00:43.400 --> 0:00:45.519 to our desk when we're done with this episode. Well, 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:47.519 the funny thing about this is that about a couple 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:50.600 of weeks ago or so, you noticed construction workers going 0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:52.680 around and take measuring going on, and you made the 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:57.200 joke then that they we're going to wallace in Little 0:00:57.200 --> 0:00:59.920 did we know that that this maze, the maze that 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:02.640 we are already working in, was going to become even 0:01:02.680 --> 0:01:06.919 more elaborate. Yes, because it is. The maze is is about, 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:10.840 in a way, elaborate confinement. It's about confusion, It's about 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:14.119 being cut off it's about not knowing which way you're 0:01:14.160 --> 0:01:16.240 going and which way is the way out, and if 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:19.000 there is even a way out, if there is a 0:01:19.040 --> 0:01:23.120 limit to the confusing layout that just flows out all 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:25.640 around you. Now, one thing that's important to mention here, 0:01:25.880 --> 0:01:28.080 and we're gonna we're gonna mention this not only in 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:31.920 this episode but the part two of this series to follow. 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:37.360 But essentially, you have mazes and you have labyrinths, and 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:41.440 very often these words are used interchangeably. One would be 0:01:41.480 --> 0:01:43.920 tempted to say it's elegant variation, which is when you 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:46.800 use uh, like when you're talking about a wolf, but 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:49.040 you use the word dog to describe it. You just 0:01:49.080 --> 0:01:50.600 wanted to mix it up and use a different word, 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:53.240 but you're actually using a word for a different thing. Well, 0:01:53.480 --> 0:01:56.639 mazes and labyrinth is is it quite that bad? Because 0:01:56.760 --> 0:01:59.760 the overlap between these two terms has been around for 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:03.560 ae aisle and it's become pretty much the you know, 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:07.520 pretty much a mainstay of the English language. So uh, 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:09.680 you can't get too up in arms over it. But 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:14.000 for the purposes of this podcast and and also scientific purposes, 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:18.239 you have mazes, which are a place of confusion, a 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:20.720 place of beatings on the walls as we're hearing now, 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:24.000 and then you have labyrinths, and labyrinth says we'll discuss 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:26.919 in the second podcast more in depth, are a place 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:29.880 of serenity. That's right, it's really a yin and yang 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:36.079 proposition here, because yes, maze tangle of options, choices, right, confusion, 0:02:36.480 --> 0:02:39.960 and the labyrinths neatly laid out a meandering path, but 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:43.280 one that has a purpose in a direction to it. 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:46.840 So right now we are going to tackle mazes. And 0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:49.960 as we say, we are podcasting today from a construction 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:54.160 zone of our maze like office. Um, and we should 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:58.080 probably get into more other or other examples of mazes, 0:02:58.120 --> 0:02:59.799 because when you think of mazes, or at least when 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:02.120 I do you, I tend to think of the elaborate 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:08.840 hedge mazes popular in the sixteen through the eighteen centuries. Yes, 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:12.560 you have basically you can divide mazes up into two 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:16.080 or three categories. Well, first, there are two basic categories. 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:18.640 There are mazes that exist in physical space and mazes 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:21.919 that exist merely as pattern or as you know, it's 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:24.600 something drawn on a sheet of paper. Uh. For the 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:26.880 most part, we're gonna be talking in this podcast though, 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:30.720 about actual physical mazes that you traverse physically, and these 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:34.440 you tend to see landscape mazes and architectural mazes, mazes 0:03:34.480 --> 0:03:36.840 that are made out of you could do dirt, but 0:03:36.920 --> 0:03:39.840 most of the time hedges, and then there are architectural mazes, 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:44.080 whereas it is an actual physical thing walls enclosing you. 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:47.760 Everyone will probably think back to the classic Jim Hinson 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:53.640 David Bowie starring film Labyrinth, which, despite being called Labyrinth, 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:57.720 everything in the movie is amaze. Everything is about confusing 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:01.640 because Sarah has to get to the castle at the 0:04:01.640 --> 0:04:04.760 center so that she can free Toby from the Goblin King, 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:08.600 but nobody wants her to actually get there. The Goblin 0:04:08.640 --> 0:04:12.160 King doesn't actually want women showing up and stealing has 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:15.120 stolen babies from him, so and there's a neat little 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:18.440 number like a Magic Song by David Bowie which he's 0:04:18.480 --> 0:04:21.640 tossing this baby around and by the way, he looks 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:24.719 like Parker Posey to me in in a Tina Turner 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:30.000 wig in this and there's a lot of heavy pop 0:04:30.400 --> 0:04:33.440 synthesizers going on. It's it's pretty awesome stuff. It is 0:04:33.440 --> 0:04:35.680 an awesome movie, but pretty much everything you see in 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:39.120 there is is a maze. From the early stone mazes 0:04:39.400 --> 0:04:41.479 that Sarah is going through, where it's very much an 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:44.240 architectural maze with walls all around her, until later she's 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:48.839 going through a landscape maze of hedges. Elsewhere, people may 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:51.719 have encountered mazes in the form of corn mazes where 0:04:51.760 --> 0:04:57.760 someone cuts a maze through the maze and nice and 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:01.040 you have to an around how the mean time? That's 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:03.520 certainly and every year in the news there's always an 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:07.040 account of a family getting lost in one of those mazes. Oh, 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:08.839 I haven't. I've never seen one of those, and I've 0:05:08.880 --> 0:05:12.040 worked in small papers for quite a while in the past, 0:05:12.080 --> 0:05:14.760 so it's strange that we never had that story. Well, 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:16.719 and then they're never found again. Are you sure that 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:18.719 you're just you didn't used to live near a particularly 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:21.960 bad a maze where they really went overboard. I'm making 0:05:21.960 --> 0:05:25.680 it complex and uh an unescapable. No, no, no. And 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:28.479 then there's like these like sort of evilish children that 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:33.520 are dressed in amish like clothing milling around. Yeah, yeah, 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:36.640 you've not heard about No, I guess this is this 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:41.160 is one of your hometown. Yeah, it's pretty common elsewhere 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:44.719 in uh. In fiction, um mazes have factored into Harry 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:47.440 Potter and the Goblet to fire the big climactic scene, 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:50.919 and that takes place within a maze. Harry's running around 0:05:50.920 --> 0:05:54.520 completely disoriented, doesn't know where he's going, and trying, you know, 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:57.120 trying to figure out how to escape the maze or 0:05:57.120 --> 0:05:59.240 make it to the center. I believe it was. What 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:00.839 I like about that man Is too, is that the 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:03.839 maze is alive, the root system is, you know, trying 0:06:03.880 --> 0:06:08.200 to tangle them and pull them in. And likewise, in Labyrinth, 0:06:08.279 --> 0:06:12.039 the maze that Sarah finds herself in is constantly changing there, 0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:15.280 like little goblin dudes running around and like changing her 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:18.880 markings and presumably changing the actual physical layout of the 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:23.120 of the maze behind her. Another fabulous maze uh in 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:27.839 film is that in The Shining Oh yeah, now it's 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:30.480 different from in the book. There there's just some hedge 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:32.719 animals that are creepy and move when you're not looking 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:36.760 at them. But in Stanley Kubrick's phenomenal film vision of 0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:40.800 the novel, he incorporates this this maze, this giant hedge maze, 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:43.159 and there's a model of the hedge maze, and and 0:06:43.240 --> 0:06:48.359 the maze comes to symbolize the house itself because the house, 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:51.480 the Haunted Overlook Hotel, is also a sort of maze, 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:55.600 and then, curiously enough, like another maze we're about to discuss, 0:06:56.120 --> 0:07:00.240 there is a deadly person at the deadly to be 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:02.880 at the center of it. In the Shining, it's Jack Torrence, 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:06.320 the writer, who ends up becoming possessed by the evil 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:09.119 of the place and then is hunting his family through 0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:12.360 both the maze that is the house and then in 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:15.400 the actual hedge maze out there in the cold. What 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:17.000 I really like about that may is too, is that 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:21.960 it's got those um those feelings of isolation, terror and 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:25.680 then disorientation in that maze. And we'll talk more about 0:07:25.720 --> 0:07:28.560 that in in Our Fear Response, our stress response to 0:07:29.360 --> 0:07:31.640 um as we go through mazes, but to me, that 0:07:31.760 --> 0:07:35.640 captures that perfectly. There's also an excellent fictional maze in 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:39.640 House of Leaves by Mark z Danielski. Basically, the book 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:42.240 itself is a maze, and there are all these footnotes 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:44.680 and footnotes upon footnotes, and there's a story within a 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:48.360 story in a documentary film within a story, and the 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:53.000 character himself, this guy Navidson, ends up trying to traverse, 0:07:53.040 --> 0:07:58.640 trying to explore this ever changing, featureless, black, otherworldly maze 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:03.160 that branches out from this haunted house presumably haunted, but 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:05.480 you never really know exactly what's going on with this place. 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:10.040 The name of the Rose by Umberto Echo is pretty great, 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:14.520 and that it features a library that is itself a maze. 0:08:14.720 --> 0:08:17.400 And this is based in large part on your hey 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:20.720 Louis Borhes the Library of Babble, where Borhees described an 0:08:20.720 --> 0:08:23.720 infinite library maze that contains not only all books, but 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:27.080 all possible books. So it just spreads out forever. And 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:29.600 so in the name of the Rose, Umberto Echo creates 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:34.400 within this mediaval Abbey, this this maze library of forbidden 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:37.120 and restricted books. In writing about it, he says that 0:08:37.200 --> 0:08:40.200 this is this library is what it's called a rhizome space, 0:08:40.640 --> 0:08:43.760 which means there's there's virtually no end to it. You 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:47.720 could wander this thing forever without finding an exit unless 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:52.920 you knew how to escape the maze. But perhaps the 0:08:52.960 --> 0:08:57.160 most famous and and just the most iconic maze from 0:08:57.400 --> 0:08:59.560 from myth and fiction and legend is of course the 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:05.680 maze Minos. Yes, and this is the tale of theseus correct, 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:10.080 the hero and the minotaur, who is at the center 0:09:10.120 --> 0:09:14.000 of what they call Again there's confusion between labyrinth and maze, 0:09:14.040 --> 0:09:17.080 but is at the middle of this and is waiting 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:20.000 for people to come through and devour them, yes, and 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:22.840 kind of wandering the halls and howling and the maze 0:09:22.840 --> 0:09:25.480 in this it was commanded to be built by King Minos, 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:29.880 who has this monstrous son that is the Minotar, this 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:34.040 half half man and half animal. Yes, yeah, monstrous flesh 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:37.199 eating creature. So he has Daedalus, who of course silt 0:09:37.200 --> 0:09:39.400 the wings for his son Icarus, just you know, the 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:43.800 fantastic engineer of Hellenistic lore. He's commanded to build and 0:09:43.800 --> 0:09:46.760 and in fact builds a maze so complicated that he 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:49.520 himself has trouble escaping from it at one point. But 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:51.680 this becomes just the sort of the defining idea of 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:55.920 a maze, this complex, confusing place that you're trapped in, 0:09:56.000 --> 0:09:59.080 you're trying to escape, and then with the Minotaur, you 0:09:59.120 --> 0:10:01.400 have this added threat that you were not alone in 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:06.000 this confusing space, this confusing, unreal world. There's also something 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:09.280 that is searching for you, something that or even if 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:11.600 it's not searching for you, you may run into it. 0:10:11.600 --> 0:10:14.559 And if you run into it, it's all over yeah, 0:10:14.679 --> 0:10:16.000 and we will talk a little bit more about the 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:18.840 minotaur as represented by our consciousness and a bit and 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:20.720 how our mind is a bit like a maze. But 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:24.120 I did want to mention that a a non fictional 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:26.880 maze that is probably what you could call the mother 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:30.640 of mazes UM is known as the Hampton Court Maze, 0:10:31.160 --> 0:10:33.800 and this is outside of London. It is really an 0:10:34.000 --> 0:10:38.520 iconic maze. Um. It is at the Hampton Court Palace 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:42.320 and it's thought that it was designed around six nine, 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:46.280 originally planted using horn beam and later we planted using 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:49.520 you and it covers a third of an acre. It's 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:52.600 trapezoid in shape and it is the UK's oldest surviving 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:55.560 catch mazing. I'm in fact, I'm sure listeners some of 0:10:55.559 --> 0:10:58.920 religensis in the UK have actually experienced this firsthand. At 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:01.679 the time. It was constructed to amuse the ladies and 0:11:01.760 --> 0:11:04.880 lords of the court, which I think is so I 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:07.439 love this idea. It's so fascinating to me that people 0:11:07.480 --> 0:11:10.600 have so much time on their hands that it wasn't 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:15.760 enough to have a palace and have all the extravagance 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:18.360 of a palace and servants. Then you had to create 0:11:18.440 --> 0:11:21.760 a maze out on your lawn in order to amuse 0:11:22.320 --> 0:11:27.000 the people within the palace, something that would actually um 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:30.760 excite fear in your visitors to the maze, right, yeah, 0:11:30.840 --> 0:11:33.760 you were. You lined it yesterday when we were talking 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:36.480 about it too. U to to like a horror movie 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:39.080 in a in an age when you didn't have horror movies, 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:41.520 uh uh. And and certainly you can also liken it 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:45.720 to a roller coaster. It is an artificial construction designed 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:49.880 to create these feelings of fear and anxiety in the 0:11:49.920 --> 0:11:52.760 individuals who are traversing it. So it's interesting to me 0:11:52.880 --> 0:11:55.480 that the upper class just you know, on a special 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:59.840 note that you would be so free from concerns or troubles, 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:03.280 you would have to create this this uh, three D 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:08.400 representation of fear to put yourself through that experience. Um. 0:12:08.400 --> 0:12:11.480 And of course we do that today with with haunted houses. 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:14.440 But what is cool about Hampton Court Maze is that 0:12:14.520 --> 0:12:18.160 this is the maze that really helped to inform science. 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:20.360 And what I mean by that is there was a 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:23.640 graduate student named Willard Small. He was the first to 0:12:23.720 --> 0:12:26.520 use a rodent maze to study learning, and he did 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:28.960 this in nineteen o one, and he created a platform 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:31.360 about six ft long by eight feet wide, covered it 0:12:31.400 --> 0:12:34.199 with sawdust and then divided it into galleries with walls 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:37.840 of wire netting, and he modeled it on a diagram 0:12:37.880 --> 0:12:41.960 of the Hedge maze at Hampton Court. So this was 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:45.160 such a famous maze in the minds of everybody, particularly 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:47.800 during the tuner of the century, that it really helped 0:12:48.000 --> 0:12:53.040 um this particular student to create this thing that really 0:12:53.600 --> 0:12:58.160 took off in science at least for a good sixty years. Yeah, 0:12:58.200 --> 0:13:00.400 because even after they stopped using the rep like of 0:13:00.480 --> 0:13:03.040 the Hampton Court Maze, which which from above looks it's 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:05.240 it's weirdly shaped like it's kind of like a hacked 0:13:05.240 --> 0:13:09.160 off pyramid, kind of like a a weird battle axe 0:13:09.280 --> 0:13:12.400 looking design. It's it's strange looking go kind of like 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:16.880 a robot woman's hips. It's interesting battle ax because uh, 0:13:17.280 --> 0:13:21.360 laborra is I means yeah, acts in in um in Greek, 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:23.760 and so that's when you look at the root of labyrinth, 0:13:23.880 --> 0:13:26.680 it is acts. But anyway, but even after they stopped 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:29.640 using the Hampton Maze, they use a simplified version of 0:13:29.679 --> 0:13:32.200 it called the Elevated Plus Maze, which basically look like 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:35.800 a plus sign. In other words, it's two hallways that 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:38.840 they cross over each other. Uh, And it's like the 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:42.400 simplest may as possible because it sends the mouse or 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:45.319 whatever that's inside it. It's they come to a point 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:48.200 where they have three choices. They can go left, they 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:50.920 can go right, they can go forward or well presumably 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:53.160 they could go backwards as well. So it's it's a 0:13:53.200 --> 0:13:56.160 simplified version of the of the maze. The maze in brief, 0:13:56.240 --> 0:13:59.960 you know, But what are they trying to to study 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:02.640 with all of this? Right? It comes back to how 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:05.199 a maze makes us feel. When I've touched on this 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:08.440 a little bit already, it's when you're inside of a maze, 0:14:09.440 --> 0:14:12.880 you feel, first of all, you feel confined. You're definitely 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:15.800 in a strange place. You you don't know which way 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:17.920 to go. Should I go this way? Should I go 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:20.360 that way? If I go if I go this way, 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:22.240 am I going to run into a dead end? Everyone 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:24.880 hates running into a dead end? That just I mean, 0:14:25.080 --> 0:14:27.400 you think of actual real world versions of this, like 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:30.600 if you've ever been in a um well to say 0:14:30.640 --> 0:14:32.800 the haunted, take a haunted house. You know, haunted house 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:35.960 is not a complete maze, because nobody wants to build 0:14:35.960 --> 0:14:38.480 a professional haunted attraction where people go in and have 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:40.760 trouble getting out, because, if we discussed in our Science 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:43.280 of Haunted Houses episode, you've got to move a certain 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:45.400 amount of people through that haunted house to make money. 0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:47.320 You need people going in, you need people going out 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:50.320 at at a decent click. But at another world hunted 0:14:50.360 --> 0:14:53.000 house in Atlanta, they frequently do have this section that's 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:55.480 kind of a mirror maze where you do at least 0:14:55.480 --> 0:14:58.920 momentarily become disoriented and not know and you don't know 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:02.440 which way to go, and so that raises your anxiety. 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:05.120 You you feel stressful because you're like, well, I thought, 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:06.560 this is what how do I get out of here? 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:08.800 Which way am I supposed to be going? And I 0:15:08.840 --> 0:15:11.600 find in those environments too, not only another world, but 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:14.400 also in like real world environments like a museum, there's 0:15:14.440 --> 0:15:17.720 also that that anxiety where you reach like a weird 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:21.480 kind of a part of the museum where you wonder 0:15:21.520 --> 0:15:24.200 if this is off limits, like maybe they didn't they 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:26.520 didn't make it clear enough, and I'm wandering into restricted 0:15:26.600 --> 0:15:30.840 territory or likewise, any new city that you're in, you're 0:15:30.840 --> 0:15:34.040 wandering around and you're wondering, am I wandering into a 0:15:34.120 --> 0:15:37.080 restricted space. Is someone gonna yell at me for being here? 0:15:37.400 --> 0:15:39.480 And I could start getting anxious about that because I 0:15:39.520 --> 0:15:42.120 hate it, you know, when I'm in trouble somebody yelling 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:44.360 at me? And then second, am I wandering into a 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:48.280 contested space, which, especially in big cities, you're like, am 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:51.560 I wandering into a no man's land of post apocalyptic 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:54.400 violence and luggings and faith stabbings? I you know, I 0:15:54.400 --> 0:15:57.240 I don't know, And that raises your instincts and your 0:15:57.280 --> 0:15:59.920 anxiety and you're just on edge of the whole time. 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:04.120 Well because in in uh, in my world, I think 0:16:04.120 --> 0:16:08.160 of it as just a microcosm of the minotaur in 0:16:08.160 --> 0:16:12.440 your head already, right, So within our own minds we 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:15.040 can think of them as mazes. In particular, we can 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:18.240 think about the default mode network. Um. This is three 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:21.120 areas of the brain, the medial prefrontal cortex, the medial 0:16:21.200 --> 0:16:25.280 parietal cortex in the medial temporal lobes we've talked about 0:16:25.280 --> 0:16:28.720 these before, being the default mode network, and this is 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:31.240 the area of your brain that deals with the eye 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:36.520 of ourselves, the chattering um sort of subconscious level where 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:38.800 we sit there and we turn over things that concern 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:42.680 ourselves and our ego. And this is really where you 0:16:42.720 --> 0:16:46.360 start to see that the mind is like a maze 0:16:46.440 --> 0:16:50.280 in this sense. Because you're going through these thought loops 0:16:50.320 --> 0:16:53.000 that you've probably gone through a million times in your 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:55.760 life about certain subjects. They tend to come up in 0:16:55.840 --> 0:16:58.400 this area of the brain, right, these concerns that you 0:16:58.400 --> 0:17:02.040 have usually about yourself. And it's kind of like a 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:06.119 hyperactive chat room for your brain, and it acts like 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:08.720 an echo chamber in this sense. And we've talked about 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:11.800 this before that when you have hyperactivity in this part 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:15.600 of the brain, it can lead to clinical depression. Right. 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:20.080 So that's why I say that this default mode network 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:23.880 is really something that's maze that we deal with every day. Yeah, 0:17:23.920 --> 0:17:26.639 we sort of we backtrack and we wander the confusing 0:17:26.680 --> 0:17:30.200 corridors of the past. We try and skip ahead a 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:32.400 little bit and figure out where we're going in the future. 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:35.320 And for many of us the whole time there well, 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:37.720 for all of us, there are certain minotaurs out there 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:39.080 in that maze as well. I mean, of course the 0:17:39.080 --> 0:17:42.960 big one is dead. Uh, that beast is out there somewhere. 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:46.119 Maybe he is around the corner, maybe he is on 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:49.200 the other side. Of the maze entirely with many many 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:52.120 walls between you and it, but you know it's there 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:54.280 and you always hear it's howling. I love that you 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:56.719 brought that up, because when I was thinking about mazes 0:17:56.760 --> 0:17:58.760 and I was thinking about how a maze is really 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:04.440 a concrete manifest station of our abstract mind me, I 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:08.280 began to think about Sarah Winchester. We have an article 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:12.960 that concerns her. Yeah. Yeah, she is the Winchester rifle 0:18:13.080 --> 0:18:15.880 heiress who at the turn of the century believed herself 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:18.480 to be haunted by the victims of the rifles that 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:22.760 her husband's company produced. And now she had something traumatic 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:25.639 events that happened in her life. She lost her child 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:29.600 and her husband, and after that, for thirty eight years 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:34.160 her house was constantly under construction and she was changing 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:37.119 the configuration of her house really to create a maze. 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:39.520 And the reason that she did that is she wanted 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:43.200 to confuse the spirits the ghosts of of the people 0:18:43.280 --> 0:18:46.520 that she thought were killed by those rifles. So if 0:18:46.560 --> 0:18:50.160 you've ever visited the house this is in San Jose, California, 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:54.040 you may have firsthand seen that there are false stairways 0:18:54.600 --> 0:18:58.120 to know where there are something like forty seven chimneys 0:18:58.160 --> 0:19:01.639 in the house. Um. Some of them are built all 0:19:01.640 --> 0:19:03.639 the way up, some of them are not. Some of 0:19:03.680 --> 0:19:08.639 them actually aren't working chimneys, fireplaces, um. And at some 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:11.880 point I believe there are five hundred rooms constructed, but 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:17.160 she would have them demolished and then rebuilt. So here 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:19.840 you go, I mean, here's talk about the hyperactivity of 0:19:19.920 --> 0:19:23.520 this part of the brain that is concerned with, um, 0:19:23.680 --> 0:19:27.960 you know, fear and uh, the self. This is someone 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:32.240 who you can really see her own brain being manifested 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:34.679 in the design of our house. Well, and it's in 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:36.840 the way. It's uh, it's kind of just another take 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:39.080 on the old idea that if you you have a 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:42.080 criminal that needs to be executed, you hang them at 0:19:42.520 --> 0:19:45.679 crossroads so that they'll have difficulty finding their way back 0:19:45.960 --> 0:19:48.240 to their hometown where they can haunt everybody and be 0:19:48.280 --> 0:19:51.040 a menace. So been in what is a crossroads but 0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:53.720 a plus maze, like we discussed earlier, we've you've placed 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:55.680 the mouse at the center the rat at the center 0:19:55.680 --> 0:19:57.640 of the plus nates. No, the rat has no which, 0:19:57.800 --> 0:20:00.960 no idea which way to go. So presume the ghost 0:20:01.080 --> 0:20:04.879 of and of an executed murder is there at the crossroots, 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:07.320 has no idea what to go. Maybe he locks down 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:09.639 and doesn't go anywhere. Maybe he heads off in the 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:12.640 wrong direction, and and and this is so cool because 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:16.239 again this is this idea of disorientation. We're gonna take 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:17.800 a quick break, but when we get back, we're going 0:20:17.840 --> 0:20:30.160 to talk about anxiety disorientation in mazes. All right, we're back, 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:32.240 and I do want to mention that is we're getting 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:35.320 into the way mazes affect our mind and our body. 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:37.919 Text that we found particularly helpful in this was The 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:42.119 Science of Healing Places by Esther M. Steinberg. Just a 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:44.800 fabulous book from beginning to end, and it deals with 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:48.919 how spaces affect us, how the layout of a space 0:20:49.119 --> 0:20:52.520 or the particulars of an environment can have a beneficial 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:55.320 effect on us or a detrimental effect on us. And 0:20:55.440 --> 0:20:58.640 in a large sense, the purest distillation of this idea 0:20:58.800 --> 0:21:01.600 is the idea of maze and labyrinth. And in this 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:04.200 podcast were of course talking about the maze. Uh And 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:08.400 as you mentioned earlier, it's just this the mazes is amazing, 0:21:08.880 --> 0:21:13.920 and that it is this kind of perfect physical manifestation 0:21:14.359 --> 0:21:16.879 of an idea are even more than an idea, just 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:19.560 like a state of mind, a state of the world. 0:21:19.680 --> 0:21:22.919 Like in a way, the mazes this perfect manifestation of 0:21:23.000 --> 0:21:26.879 the of the human experience in its confusing sense, you know, 0:21:27.160 --> 0:21:29.000 like I thought, I it makes me think of the 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:32.240 obelisk from the Monolith rather from two thousand and one 0:21:32.280 --> 0:21:34.560 of Space Odyssey. You know, it's just that you can 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:37.440 basically just thinking about it, you can sort of catch 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:41.439 the hum Yeah, you know, we are talking about mazes 0:21:41.440 --> 0:21:44.680 in a very literal sense today, but if you took 0:21:44.680 --> 0:21:47.000 a bird's eye view of yourself right now, in this 0:21:47.040 --> 0:21:48.840 time and space, you would see that you are in 0:21:48.920 --> 0:21:51.560 a maze somewhere right even if you're just walking down 0:21:51.560 --> 0:21:54.639 the city block, you are within a maze. Um. But 0:21:54.880 --> 0:21:59.320 what is so interesting about mazes is this idea that 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:02.320 in as you say that the purest sense is taking 0:22:02.400 --> 0:22:04.600