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 Tickless. And
Speaker 1: in this podcast, we are speaking to you from a maze,
Speaker 1: from a maze that is being constructed all around us
Speaker 1: here at the house Stuff Works offices in Atlanta. Turns
Speaker 1: out we we shuffled around the floor a little bit
Speaker 1: and just decided on a whim, let's create a complex
Speaker 1: architectural structure all around us. I can hear them building
Speaker 1: it even now, making it even more complicated. Uh so
Speaker 1: we may not be able to make our way back
Speaker 1: to our desk when we're done with this episode. Well,
Speaker 1: the funny thing about this is that about a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago or so, you noticed construction workers going
Speaker 1: around and take measuring going on, and you made the
Speaker 1: joke then that they we're going to wallace in Little
Speaker 1: did we know that that this maze, the maze that
Speaker 1: we are already working in, was going to become even
Speaker 1: more elaborate. Yes, because it is. The maze is is about,
Speaker 1: in a way, elaborate confinement. It's about confusion, It's about
Speaker 1: being cut off it's about not knowing which way you're
Speaker 1: going and which way is the way out, and if
Speaker 1: there is even a way out, if there is a
Speaker 1: limit to the confusing layout that just flows out all
Speaker 1: around you. Now, one thing that's important to mention here,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna we're gonna mention this not only in
Speaker 1: this episode but the part two of this series to follow.
Speaker 1: But essentially, you have mazes and you have labyrinths, and
Speaker 1: very often these words are used interchangeably. One would be
Speaker 1: tempted to say it's elegant variation, which is when you
Speaker 1: use uh, like when you're talking about a wolf, but
Speaker 1: you use the word dog to describe it. You just
Speaker 1: wanted to mix it up and use a different word,
Speaker 1: but you're actually using a word for a different thing. Well,
Speaker 1: mazes and labyrinth is is it quite that bad? Because
Speaker 1: the overlap between these two terms has been around for
Speaker 1: ae aisle and it's become pretty much the you know,
Speaker 1: pretty much a mainstay of the English language. So uh,
Speaker 1: you can't get too up in arms over it. But
Speaker 1: for the purposes of this podcast and and also scientific purposes,
Speaker 1: you have mazes, which are a place of confusion, a
Speaker 1: place of beatings on the walls as we're hearing now,
Speaker 1: and then you have labyrinths, and labyrinth says we'll discuss
Speaker 1: in the second podcast more in depth, are a place
Speaker 1: of serenity. That's right, it's really a yin and yang
Speaker 1: proposition here, because yes, maze tangle of options, choices, right, confusion,
Speaker 1: and the labyrinths neatly laid out a meandering path, but
Speaker 1: one that has a purpose in a direction to it.
Speaker 1: So right now we are going to tackle mazes. And
Speaker 1: as we say, we are podcasting today from a construction
Speaker 1: zone of our maze like office. Um, and we should
Speaker 1: probably get into more other or other examples of mazes,
Speaker 1: because when you think of mazes, or at least when
Speaker 1: I do you, I tend to think of the elaborate
Speaker 1: hedge mazes popular in the sixteen through the eighteen centuries. Yes,
Speaker 1: you have basically you can divide mazes up into two
Speaker 1: or three categories. Well, first, there are two basic categories.
Speaker 1: There are mazes that exist in physical space and mazes
Speaker 1: that exist merely as pattern or as you know, it's
Speaker 1: something drawn on a sheet of paper. Uh. For the
Speaker 1: most part, we're gonna be talking in this podcast though,
Speaker 1: about actual physical mazes that you traverse physically, and these
Speaker 1: you tend to see landscape mazes and architectural mazes, mazes
Speaker 1: that are made out of you could do dirt, but
Speaker 1: most of the time hedges, and then there are architectural mazes,
Speaker 1: whereas it is an actual physical thing walls enclosing you.
Speaker 1: Everyone will probably think back to the classic Jim Hinson
Speaker 1: David Bowie starring film Labyrinth, which, despite being called Labyrinth,
Speaker 1: everything in the movie is amaze. Everything is about confusing
Speaker 1: because Sarah has to get to the castle at the
Speaker 1: center so that she can free Toby from the Goblin King,
Speaker 1: but nobody wants her to actually get there. The Goblin
Speaker 1: King doesn't actually want women showing up and stealing has
Speaker 1: stolen babies from him, so and there's a neat little
Speaker 1: number like a Magic Song by David Bowie which he's
Speaker 1: tossing this baby around and by the way, he looks
Speaker 1: like Parker Posey to me in in a Tina Turner
Speaker 1: wig in this and there's a lot of heavy pop
Speaker 1: synthesizers going on. It's it's pretty awesome stuff. It is
Speaker 1: an awesome movie, but pretty much everything you see in
Speaker 1: there is is a maze. From the early stone mazes
Speaker 1: that Sarah is going through, where it's very much an
Speaker 1: architectural maze with walls all around her, until later she's
Speaker 1: going through a landscape maze of hedges. Elsewhere, people may
Speaker 1: have encountered mazes in the form of corn mazes where
Speaker 1: someone cuts a maze through the maze and nice and
Speaker 1: you have to an around how the mean time? That's
Speaker 1: certainly and every year in the news there's always an
Speaker 1: account of a family getting lost in one of those mazes. Oh,
Speaker 1: I haven't. I've never seen one of those, and I've
Speaker 1: worked in small papers for quite a while in the past,
Speaker 1: so it's strange that we never had that story. Well,
Speaker 1: and then they're never found again. Are you sure that
Speaker 1: you're just you didn't used to live near a particularly
Speaker 1: bad a maze where they really went overboard. I'm making
Speaker 1: it complex and uh an unescapable. No, no, no. And
Speaker 1: then there's like these like sort of evilish children that
Speaker 1: are dressed in amish like clothing milling around. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've not heard about No, I guess this is this
Speaker 1: is one of your hometown. Yeah, it's pretty common elsewhere
Speaker 1: in uh. In fiction, um mazes have factored into Harry
Speaker 1: Potter and the Goblet to fire the big climactic scene,
Speaker 1: and that takes place within a maze. Harry's running around
Speaker 1: completely disoriented, doesn't know where he's going, and trying, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to escape the maze or
Speaker 1: make it to the center. I believe it was. What
Speaker 1: I like about that man Is too, is that the
Speaker 1: maze is alive, the root system is, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to tangle them and pull them in. And likewise, in Labyrinth,
Speaker 1: the maze that Sarah finds herself in is constantly changing there,
Speaker 1: like little goblin dudes running around and like changing her
Speaker 1: markings and presumably changing the actual physical layout of the
Speaker 1: of the maze behind her. Another fabulous maze uh in
Speaker 1: film is that in The Shining Oh yeah, now it's
Speaker 1: different from in the book. There there's just some hedge
Speaker 1: animals that are creepy and move when you're not looking
Speaker 1: at them. But in Stanley Kubrick's phenomenal film vision of
Speaker 1: the novel, he incorporates this this maze, this giant hedge maze,
Speaker 1: and there's a model of the hedge maze, and and
Speaker 1: the maze comes to symbolize the house itself because the house,
Speaker 1: the Haunted Overlook Hotel, is also a sort of maze,
Speaker 1: and then, curiously enough, like another maze we're about to discuss,
Speaker 1: there is a deadly person at the deadly to be
Speaker 1: at the center of it. In the Shining, it's Jack Torrence,
Speaker 1: the writer, who ends up becoming possessed by the evil
Speaker 1: of the place and then is hunting his family through
Speaker 1: both the maze that is the house and then in
Speaker 1: the actual hedge maze out there in the cold. What
Speaker 1: I really like about that may is too, is that
Speaker 1: it's got those um those feelings of isolation, terror and
Speaker 1: then disorientation in that maze. And we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: that in in Our Fear Response, our stress response to
Speaker 1: um as we go through mazes, but to me, that
Speaker 1: captures that perfectly. There's also an excellent fictional maze in
Speaker 1: House of Leaves by Mark z Danielski. Basically, the book
Speaker 1: itself is a maze, and there are all these footnotes
Speaker 1: and footnotes upon footnotes, and there's a story within a
Speaker 1: story in a documentary film within a story, and the
Speaker 1: character himself, this guy Navidson, ends up trying to traverse,
Speaker 1: trying to explore this ever changing, featureless, black, otherworldly maze
Speaker 1: that branches out from this haunted house presumably haunted, but
Speaker 1: you never really know exactly what's going on with this place.
Speaker 1: The name of the Rose by Umberto Echo is pretty great,
Speaker 1: and that it features a library that is itself a maze.
Speaker 1: And this is based in large part on your hey
Speaker 1: Louis Borhes the Library of Babble, where Borhees described an
Speaker 1: infinite library maze that contains not only all books, but
Speaker 1: all possible books. So it just spreads out forever. And
Speaker 1: so in the name of the Rose, Umberto Echo creates
Speaker 1: within this mediaval Abbey, this this maze library of forbidden
Speaker 1: and restricted books. In writing about it, he says that
Speaker 1: this is this library is what it's called a rhizome space,
Speaker 1: which means there's there's virtually no end to it. You
Speaker 1: could wander this thing forever without finding an exit unless
Speaker 1: you knew how to escape the maze. But perhaps the
Speaker 1: most famous and and just the most iconic maze from
Speaker 1: from myth and fiction and legend is of course the
Speaker 1: maze Minos. Yes, and this is the tale of theseus correct,
Speaker 1: the hero and the minotaur, who is at the center
Speaker 1: of what they call Again there's confusion between labyrinth and maze,
Speaker 1: but is at the middle of this and is waiting
Speaker 1: for people to come through and devour them, yes, and
Speaker 1: kind of wandering the halls and howling and the maze
Speaker 1: in this it was commanded to be built by King Minos,
Speaker 1: who has this monstrous son that is the Minotar, this
Speaker 1: half half man and half animal. Yes, yeah, monstrous flesh
Speaker 1: eating creature. So he has Daedalus, who of course silt
Speaker 1: the wings for his son Icarus, just you know, the
Speaker 1: fantastic engineer of Hellenistic lore. He's commanded to build and
Speaker 1: and in fact builds a maze so complicated that he
Speaker 1: himself has trouble escaping from it at one point. But
Speaker 1: this becomes just the sort of the defining idea of
Speaker 1: a maze, this complex, confusing place that you're trapped in,
Speaker 1: you're trying to escape, and then with the Minotaur, you
Speaker 1: have this added threat that you were not alone in
Speaker 1: this confusing space, this confusing, unreal world. There's also something
Speaker 1: that is searching for you, something that or even if
Speaker 1: it's not searching for you, you may run into it.
Speaker 1: And if you run into it, it's all over yeah,
Speaker 1: and we will talk a little bit more about the
Speaker 1: minotaur as represented by our consciousness and a bit and
Speaker 1: how our mind is a bit like a maze. But
Speaker 1: I did want to mention that a a non fictional
Speaker 1: maze that is probably what you could call the mother
Speaker 1: of mazes UM is known as the Hampton Court Maze,
Speaker 1: and this is outside of London. It is really an
Speaker 1: iconic maze. Um. It is at the Hampton Court Palace
Speaker 1: and it's thought that it was designed around six nine,
Speaker 1: originally planted using horn beam and later we planted using
Speaker 1: you and it covers a third of an acre. It's
Speaker 1: trapezoid in shape and it is the UK's oldest surviving
Speaker 1: catch mazing. I'm in fact, I'm sure listeners some of
Speaker 1: religensis in the UK have actually experienced this firsthand. At
Speaker 1: the time. It was constructed to amuse the ladies and
Speaker 1: lords of the court, which I think is so I
Speaker 1: love this idea. It's so fascinating to me that people
Speaker 1: have so much time on their hands that it wasn't
Speaker 1: enough to have a palace and have all the extravagance
Speaker 1: of a palace and servants. Then you had to create
Speaker 1: a maze out on your lawn in order to amuse
Speaker 1: the people within the palace, something that would actually um
Speaker 1: excite fear in your visitors to the maze, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: you were. You lined it yesterday when we were talking
Speaker 1: about it too. U to to like a horror movie
Speaker 1: in a in an age when you didn't have horror movies,
Speaker 1: uh uh. And and certainly you can also liken it
Speaker 1: to a roller coaster. It is an artificial construction designed
Speaker 1: to create these feelings of fear and anxiety in the
Speaker 1: individuals who are traversing it. So it's interesting to me
Speaker 1: that the upper class just you know, on a special
Speaker 1: note that you would be so free from concerns or troubles,
Speaker 1: you would have to create this this uh, three D
Speaker 1: representation of fear to put yourself through that experience. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course we do that today with with haunted houses.
Speaker 1: But what is cool about Hampton Court Maze is that
Speaker 1: this is the maze that really helped to inform science.
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is there was a
Speaker 1: graduate student named Willard Small. He was the first to
Speaker 1: use a rodent maze to study learning, and he did
Speaker 1: this in nineteen o one, and he created a platform
Speaker 1: about six ft long by eight feet wide, covered it
Speaker 1: with sawdust and then divided it into galleries with walls
Speaker 1: of wire netting, and he modeled it on a diagram
Speaker 1: of the Hedge maze at Hampton Court. So this was
Speaker 1: such a famous maze in the minds of everybody, particularly
Speaker 1: during the tuner of the century, that it really helped
Speaker 1: um this particular student to create this thing that really
Speaker 1: took off in science at least for a good sixty years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because even after they stopped using the rep like of
Speaker 1: the Hampton Court Maze, which which from above looks it's
Speaker 1: it's weirdly shaped like it's kind of like a hacked
Speaker 1: off pyramid, kind of like a a weird battle axe
Speaker 1: looking design. It's it's strange looking go kind of like
Speaker 1: a robot woman's hips. It's interesting battle ax because uh,
Speaker 1: laborra is I means yeah, acts in in um in Greek,
Speaker 1: and so that's when you look at the root of labyrinth,
Speaker 1: it is acts. But anyway, but even after they stopped
Speaker 1: using the Hampton Maze, they use a simplified version of
Speaker 1: it called the Elevated Plus Maze, which basically look like
Speaker 1: a plus sign. In other words, it's two hallways that
Speaker 1: they cross over each other. Uh, And it's like the
Speaker 1: simplest may as possible because it sends the mouse or
Speaker 1: whatever that's inside it. It's they come to a point
Speaker 1: where they have three choices. They can go left, they
Speaker 1: can go right, they can go forward or well presumably
Speaker 1: they could go backwards as well. So it's it's a
Speaker 1: simplified version of the of the maze. The maze in brief,
Speaker 1: you know, But what are they trying to to study
Speaker 1: with all of this? Right? It comes back to how
Speaker 1: a maze makes us feel. When I've touched on this
Speaker 1: a little bit already, it's when you're inside of a maze,
Speaker 1: you feel, first of all, you feel confined. You're definitely
Speaker 1: in a strange place. You you don't know which way
Speaker 1: to go. Should I go this way? Should I go
Speaker 1: that way? If I go if I go this way,
Speaker 1: am I going to run into a dead end? Everyone
Speaker 1: hates running into a dead end? That just I mean,
Speaker 1: you think of actual real world versions of this, like
Speaker 1: if you've ever been in a um well to say
Speaker 1: the haunted, take a haunted house. You know, haunted house
Speaker 1: is not a complete maze, because nobody wants to build
Speaker 1: a professional haunted attraction where people go in and have
Speaker 1: trouble getting out, because, if we discussed in our Science
Speaker 1: of Haunted Houses episode, you've got to move a certain
Speaker 1: amount of people through that haunted house to make money.
Speaker 1: You need people going in, you need people going out
Speaker 1: at at a decent click. But at another world hunted
Speaker 1: house in Atlanta, they frequently do have this section that's
Speaker 1: kind of a mirror maze where you do at least
Speaker 1: momentarily become disoriented and not know and you don't know
Speaker 1: which way to go, and so that raises your anxiety.
Speaker 1: You you feel stressful because you're like, well, I thought,
Speaker 1: this is what how do I get out of here?
Speaker 1: Which way am I supposed to be going? And I
Speaker 1: find in those environments too, not only another world, but
Speaker 1: also in like real world environments like a museum, there's
Speaker 1: also that that anxiety where you reach like a weird
Speaker 1: kind of a part of the museum where you wonder
Speaker 1: if this is off limits, like maybe they didn't they
Speaker 1: didn't make it clear enough, and I'm wandering into restricted
Speaker 1: territory or likewise, any new city that you're in, you're
Speaker 1: wandering around and you're wondering, am I wandering into a
Speaker 1: restricted space. Is someone gonna yell at me for being here?
Speaker 1: And I could start getting anxious about that because I
Speaker 1: hate it, you know, when I'm in trouble somebody yelling
Speaker 1: at me? And then second, am I wandering into a
Speaker 1: contested space, which, especially in big cities, you're like, am
Speaker 1: I wandering into a no man's land of post apocalyptic
Speaker 1: violence and luggings and faith stabbings? I you know, I
Speaker 1: I don't know, And that raises your instincts and your
Speaker 1: anxiety and you're just on edge of the whole time.
Speaker 1: Well because in in uh, in my world, I think
Speaker 1: of it as just a microcosm of the minotaur in
Speaker 1: your head already, right, So within our own minds we
Speaker 1: can think of them as mazes. In particular, we can
Speaker 1: think about the default mode network. Um. This is three
Speaker 1: areas of the brain, the medial prefrontal cortex, the medial
Speaker 1: parietal cortex in the medial temporal lobes we've talked about
Speaker 1: these before, being the default mode network, and this is
Speaker 1: the area of your brain that deals with the eye
Speaker 1: of ourselves, the chattering um sort of subconscious level where
Speaker 1: we sit there and we turn over things that concern
Speaker 1: ourselves and our ego. And this is really where you
Speaker 1: start to see that the mind is like a maze
Speaker 1: in this sense. Because you're going through these thought loops
Speaker 1: that you've probably gone through a million times in your
Speaker 1: life about certain subjects. They tend to come up in
Speaker 1: this area of the brain, right, these concerns that you
Speaker 1: have usually about yourself. And it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: hyperactive chat room for your brain, and it acts like
Speaker 1: an echo chamber in this sense. And we've talked about
Speaker 1: this before that when you have hyperactivity in this part
Speaker 1: of the brain, it can lead to clinical depression. Right.
Speaker 1: So that's why I say that this default mode network
Speaker 1: is really something that's maze that we deal with every day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we sort of we backtrack and we wander the confusing
Speaker 1: corridors of the past. We try and skip ahead a
Speaker 1: little bit and figure out where we're going in the future.
Speaker 1: And for many of us the whole time there well,
Speaker 1: for all of us, there are certain minotaurs out there
Speaker 1: in that maze as well. I mean, of course the
Speaker 1: big one is dead. Uh, that beast is out there somewhere.
Speaker 1: Maybe he is around the corner, maybe he is on
Speaker 1: the other side. Of the maze entirely with many many
Speaker 1: walls between you and it, but you know it's there
Speaker 1: and you always hear it's howling. I love that you
Speaker 1: brought that up, because when I was thinking about mazes
Speaker 1: and I was thinking about how a maze is really
Speaker 1: a concrete manifest station of our abstract mind me, I
Speaker 1: began to think about Sarah Winchester. We have an article
Speaker 1: that concerns her. Yeah. Yeah, she is the Winchester rifle
Speaker 1: heiress who at the turn of the century believed herself
Speaker 1: to be haunted by the victims of the rifles that
Speaker 1: her husband's company produced. And now she had something traumatic
Speaker 1: events that happened in her life. She lost her child
Speaker 1: and her husband, and after that, for thirty eight years
Speaker 1: her house was constantly under construction and she was changing
Speaker 1: the configuration of her house really to create a maze.
Speaker 1: And the reason that she did that is she wanted
Speaker 1: to confuse the spirits the ghosts of of the people
Speaker 1: that she thought were killed by those rifles. So if
Speaker 1: you've ever visited the house this is in San Jose, California,
Speaker 1: you may have firsthand seen that there are false stairways
Speaker 1: to know where there are something like forty seven chimneys
Speaker 1: in the house. Um. Some of them are built all
Speaker 1: the way up, some of them are not. Some of
Speaker 1: them actually aren't working chimneys, fireplaces, um. And at some
Speaker 1: point I believe there are five hundred rooms constructed, but
Speaker 1: she would have them demolished and then rebuilt. So here
Speaker 1: you go, I mean, here's talk about the hyperactivity of
Speaker 1: this part of the brain that is concerned with, um,
Speaker 1: you know, fear and uh, the self. This is someone
Speaker 1: who you can really see her own brain being manifested
Speaker 1: in the design of our house. Well, and it's in
Speaker 1: the way. It's uh, it's kind of just another take
Speaker 1: on the old idea that if you you have a
Speaker 1: criminal that needs to be executed, you hang them at
Speaker 1: crossroads so that they'll have difficulty finding their way back
Speaker 1: to their hometown where they can haunt everybody and be
Speaker 1: a menace. So been in what is a crossroads but
Speaker 1: a plus maze, like we discussed earlier, we've you've placed
Speaker 1: the mouse at the center the rat at the center
Speaker 1: of the plus nates. No, the rat has no which,
Speaker 1: no idea which way to go. So presume the ghost
Speaker 1: of and of an executed murder is there at the crossroots,
Speaker 1: has no idea what to go. Maybe he locks down
Speaker 1: and doesn't go anywhere. Maybe he heads off in the
Speaker 1: wrong direction, and and and this is so cool because
Speaker 1: again this is this idea of disorientation. We're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break, but when we get back, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about anxiety disorientation in mazes. All right, we're back,
Speaker 1: and I do want to mention that is we're getting
Speaker 1: into the way mazes affect our mind and our body.
Speaker 1: Text that we found particularly helpful in this was The
Speaker 1: Science of Healing Places by Esther M. Steinberg. Just a
Speaker 1: fabulous book from beginning to end, and it deals with
Speaker 1: how spaces affect us, how the layout of a space
Speaker 1: or the particulars of an environment can have a beneficial
Speaker 1: effect on us or a detrimental effect on us. And
Speaker 1: in a large sense, the purest distillation of this idea
Speaker 1: is the idea of maze and labyrinth. And in this
Speaker 1: podcast were of course talking about the maze. Uh And
Speaker 1: as you mentioned earlier, it's just this the mazes is amazing,
Speaker 1: and that it is this kind of perfect physical manifestation
Speaker 1: of an idea are even more than an idea, just
Speaker 1: like a state of mind, a state of the world.
Speaker 1: Like in a way, the mazes this perfect manifestation of
Speaker 1: the of the human experience in its confusing sense, you know,
Speaker 1: like I thought, I it makes me think of the
Speaker 1: obelisk from the Monolith rather from two thousand and one
Speaker 1: of Space Odyssey. You know, it's just that you can
Speaker 1: basically just thinking about it, you can sort of catch
Speaker 1: the hum Yeah, you know, we are talking about mazes
Speaker 1: in a very literal sense today, but if you took
Speaker 1: a bird's eye view of yourself right now, in this
Speaker 1: time and space, you would see that you are in
Speaker 1: a maze somewhere right even if you're just walking down
Speaker 1: the city block, you are within a maze. Um. But
Speaker 1: what is so interesting about mazes is this idea that
Speaker 1: in as you say that the purest sense is taking
Speaker 1: all of those different senses of the way that we
Speaker 1: perceive the world in creating this this construct that really
Speaker 1: amplifies all those feelings. And so when we talk about
Speaker 1: new experiences and uh, we talk about how we perceive things,
Speaker 1: there's some anxiety that comes along with that. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: stress and anxiety. So stress is not a new idea.
Speaker 1: People have been stressed out for ages. For instance, the
Speaker 1: ancient Romans used a word string array, which means to squeeze, tight,
Speaker 1: to graze, to touch, or injure. But it wasn't until
Speaker 1: around ninety six a Nature article by scientists Hans Zeely
Speaker 1: published this article where he talked about stress in the
Speaker 1: terms of a body's non specific response to an external demand.
Speaker 1: And in ninety four physiologist Walter B. Canon for the
Speaker 1: first time show that animals produce adrenaline in response to stress.
Speaker 1: And this is the first proof that environments trigger bodily
Speaker 1: responses like this, And so in the decade is that
Speaker 1: follow we learn even more about how the brain response
Speaker 1: to stress. For instance, hormones and chemicals in the brain
Speaker 1: are released to deal with stress. Namely, we have a
Speaker 1: stress hormone called c r H that's corticotra pent releasing
Speaker 1: hormone UH, and this forces the peteritary gland to pump
Speaker 1: out more a c t H and this travels through
Speaker 1: the blood to the adrenal glands and this makes them
Speaker 1: pump out cortisol Corso, of course being in the stress
Speaker 1: hormone and all of us is really important. You want
Speaker 1: to be able to tap into this stress response. Right,
Speaker 1: this fear response, because that's really what helps us to
Speaker 1: tune into the details in a novel place or situation
Speaker 1: in order to detect the way out to survive in
Speaker 1: some way. That's when we see the whites of our
Speaker 1: eyes getting even larger because we're trying to really pay
Speaker 1: attention to our environments. The problem, of course, comes when
Speaker 1: we're overloaded with a stress response, and when we're in
Speaker 1: this state of fear for longer than we need to be.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about this in a bit too. Uh,
Speaker 1: when the situation doesn't necessarily call for the stress response,
Speaker 1: that is elicited, right right. Because again, when the when
Speaker 1: the stress mormons kick in, the nerve cells fired to
Speaker 1: release an adrenaline like nerve chemical called nora a pineffine,
Speaker 1: and this is this is when the brain's fear center,
Speaker 1: the amigla, becomes active. And again adrenaline is important, and
Speaker 1: we'll discuss that a little more as we go here.
Speaker 1: But this is how you want to feel inside of
Speaker 1: a maze, because the maze triggers anxiety and stress because
Speaker 1: of essentially four things. According to S. C. In Steinberg.
Speaker 1: First of all, you're in an architectural maze or even
Speaker 1: a hedge maze, what can you see? What are you
Speaker 1: seeing around you? With your site? This key sense of
Speaker 1: it really just whatever's on either side. Right. So of
Speaker 1: course with blinders, yeah, it's like blinder here, blinder there.
Speaker 1: You can see a little ways in front of you,
Speaker 1: turn around, you can see a little ways behind you.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, your sense of the world
Speaker 1: via site is really limited. And the next one is
Speaker 1: one that I never really thought about all that, But
Speaker 1: you have no clear sound to guide you either, because
Speaker 1: if you're if you're in a hedge maze, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be a certain amount of sound buffering, and then if
Speaker 1: you're in an actual architectural maze, you can have sound
Speaker 1: buffering plus the potential for echoes as well, like, for instance,
Speaker 1: the sound of that minotaur is how echoing through the tunnels.
Speaker 1: So already our site, our ability to see the world
Speaker 1: is a significantly altered in our ability to to navigate
Speaker 1: the world via sound is significantly altered. Right. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if the listeners can detect this, but there
Speaker 1: was just a bunch of hammering going on, and I
Speaker 1: was just thinking, like, we're inside of our little maze
Speaker 1: right now, inside the podcast. I have no idea what
Speaker 1: direction that's kind I don't either. I can feel it,
Speaker 1: actually can feel it on my feet, but I know
Speaker 1: it that's not under me. I know it's not probably
Speaker 1: on the other side of the wall. But again, here's
Speaker 1: this idea that you can't get your normal sound clues correct, Um,
Speaker 1: you have limited vision, you have a new alien environment. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: this is like a maze, like a straight up maze,
Speaker 1: like out of the shining. This is an unreal environment,
Speaker 1: and it's like and it's purest sense, it's it maybe
Speaker 1: an analog for confusion in the mind and puzzles of
Speaker 1: the mind, and maybe an analog for potentially confusing environments
Speaker 1: in the natural world and certainly in the unnatural world
Speaker 1: of cities. But this is its purest sense. It is
Speaker 1: alien in every sense of the word. And the worst
Speaker 1: part of it is you now have choices, and you
Speaker 1: have uncertainty along with that novelty. And think about your
Speaker 1: poor hippocampus. This is the part of your brain that
Speaker 1: is trying to navigate right spatially and is using usually
Speaker 1: using memory to do this. So it's a little bit
Speaker 1: like if you were dropped into a new city and
Speaker 1: you had to find your bearings. What happens, you feel
Speaker 1: stressed out, You feel a little bit more aware, because
Speaker 1: this is part of your brain that's saying, I don't
Speaker 1: have a blueprint for this, and I don't know what
Speaker 1: is the right choice. Yeah, like for us, like I know,
Speaker 1: when I go to New York City, I certainly don't
Speaker 1: go there enough to where I know my way around.
Speaker 1: So when I emerged from a subway out onto the street,
Speaker 1: I'll have no idea which way is north, which way
Speaker 1: the south? What does that street sign say out there?
Speaker 1: Which is that one? Stay back there? Did I take
Speaker 1: the wrong course? Am I completely out of bounds here
Speaker 1: in regards to where I'm trying to get to? And
Speaker 1: and certainly even taking something like Atlanta's Marta every day,
Speaker 1: which is basically a plus uh plus marking because it's north,
Speaker 1: north and southeast and west. But but still, especially at
Speaker 1: the at the very center of that, the center of confusion,
Speaker 1: which is a place called the five Um, you do
Speaker 1: see outsiders and tourists and people who normally don't take
Speaker 1: the train wandering around confused, and you can see the
Speaker 1: feel of the anxiety and the stress is coming off
Speaker 1: them because they're like where am I? Which way am
Speaker 1: I going? And what are all these mentors doing here?
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, it's so sad when you see
Speaker 1: them gobbled up in the corners of the station by
Speaker 1: the minotaurs. But this reminds me again of the rats,
Speaker 1: and back to the Hampton Court maze, because again this
Speaker 1: is the maze that inspired the elevated plus line maze.
Speaker 1: And the reason why rats were studied in this configuration
Speaker 1: is because it's really easy to study anxiety in this
Speaker 1: as you have pointed out, because you make an animal
Speaker 1: feel anxiety, it's just bamed. Put them in that space
Speaker 1: and the environment makes them feel it. And the reason
Speaker 1: why rats had such a run with these mazes, so
Speaker 1: to speak, is because you know, pharmacological studies began with
Speaker 1: us to see if they could use certain substances to
Speaker 1: reduce that anxiety, and so they had rats run these
Speaker 1: mazes again and again. In fact, rats became the gold
Speaker 1: standard of animals to use in psychology experiments. So again
Speaker 1: what Esther Serberg is saying that when you have all
Speaker 1: of these different elements, you have a novelty, you have
Speaker 1: a restriction in sight and sound, and you have in
Speaker 1: the case of the elevated plus sign elevation to throw
Speaker 1: into that. Uh, the rat will actually freeze at these
Speaker 1: points that offer what she says, the most frightening combination
Speaker 1: of choices available. Yeah, and we're like freezing. We're talking
Speaker 1: increased defication, elevations of cortisol, the stress hormone in the blood.
Speaker 1: And it is vital to point out that it's important
Speaker 1: to have that stress hormone. Um, it helps us solve
Speaker 1: the maze if if balanced, It focuses our attention, it
Speaker 1: gives us energy, It raises our awareness of the surroundings
Speaker 1: so that we notice the small details that they lead
Speaker 1: to our escape. Do you think of any story where
Speaker 1: an individual is in a maze, what do they have
Speaker 1: to do? They have to their their own guard. They
Speaker 1: might have to face a minuteur for crying out loud,
Speaker 1: But then they also have to be super observant because
Speaker 1: especially if the mazes kind of featureless, right, Uh, maybe
Speaker 1: they're marking stuff on the walls with chalk or they're
Speaker 1: using string whatever, but they you have to you can't
Speaker 1: just calmly walk through. This is a confusing, challenging environment. Again,
Speaker 1: it's the representation of all the confusion and risks in
Speaker 1: the real world and you're feeling at all legitimately in
Speaker 1: the maze. Yeah, And she talks about this dose effect
Speaker 1: in this beneficial stress response as opposed to something that
Speaker 1: becomes detrimental and uh. In the book, she talks about
Speaker 1: Gary Aston Jones. He's a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and what he did is he embedded electrodes into the
Speaker 1: brains of monkeys, specifically a place called the locusts cerulius,
Speaker 1: and this is the region that governs vigilance, focused attention,
Speaker 1: and the adrenaline component of the stress response. And what
Speaker 1: happened is that when the monkeys were relaxed, there was
Speaker 1: just a little bit of nerve cell firing in this
Speaker 1: part of the brain, But when they were focusing on
Speaker 1: something like pressing a lever to obtain a pellet of food,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of nerve cell firing in the
Speaker 1: locust cerelius. So this is a good thing, right. You
Speaker 1: see the monkey performing at optimal levels under stress to
Speaker 1: a certain degree, but when the researchers stressed them a
Speaker 1: lot all of the nerve cells began firing in this
Speaker 1: Sisternberg is what led to the monkey failing at the
Speaker 1: task that the researchers were putting them to. So again,
Speaker 1: it's this overload of circuitry in the stress response that
Speaker 1: makes us freeze at times. Yuh Steinberg compares it to
Speaker 1: a U shaped curve. Think of it this way. You
Speaker 1: have a speech to give, kind of like our keynote
Speaker 1: that we gave in Minneapolis. So you want to go
Speaker 1: in there with a certain amount of of of energy. Right,
Speaker 1: you're about to give a keynote. You don't want to
Speaker 1: be like I just woke up, you know, you gotta Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to have a certain amount of energy. So
Speaker 1: this U shaped curve, it's like a little hill. Okay,
Speaker 1: So as our anxiety rises up towards the middle of
Speaker 1: this hill, at the very top of that hill, that
Speaker 1: is like prime keynote territory, You're you're the maximum amount
Speaker 1: amount of energy and anxiety and stress that will allow
Speaker 1: you to get in there and just kill you know,
Speaker 1: to just get in there and deliver on all the front.
Speaker 1: You're alert and focus. Right, But then is that if
Speaker 1: that anxiety builds past that point, then it begins to
Speaker 1: dip down. Uh, and at the bottom of that hill
Speaker 1: is freezing up pooping yourself and falling off the stage
Speaker 1: like utter a complete so much stress over it that
Speaker 1: you cannot even function at a basic human level. And
Speaker 1: then everywhere between the peak of that hill and the
Speaker 1: bottom that you know, all the other things that can happen,
Speaker 1: where all that speech didn't really go too well. My
Speaker 1: nerves were a little fraid, you know. So you shaped
Speaker 1: curve and so the ideally, if you're in the maze,
Speaker 1: you want to uh be somewhere near the top of
Speaker 1: that curve, at the top of that hill, because that
Speaker 1: is the mindset that you need to solve the maze,
Speaker 1: and it's the mindset that your body is going for,
Speaker 1: Like that's where you're That's why you're having these responses
Speaker 1: because the body is like, this is confusing. Let's get
Speaker 1: in maze solving mode. Well, and here's the deal. If
Speaker 1: if just some practical advice here, if anybody is going
Speaker 1: to give a keynote address and they feel like they
Speaker 1: are about to go down the hill into self defecation,
Speaker 1: take that moment to actually stand in a powerful pose.
Speaker 1: We talked about this before, um because this pose, if
Speaker 1: if you stand in it for two minutes or more,
Speaker 1: we'll actually decrease your cortisol stress levels and increase is
Speaker 1: your testosterone. Then increase of the testosterone is important because
Speaker 1: that helps your confidence. The lowering of the cortisol stress
Speaker 1: means that you will not poop your pants, So just
Speaker 1: a little f y either. So what other methods are
Speaker 1: at our disposal for escaping a maze? Solving a maze?
Speaker 1: How are we going to get out of this maze
Speaker 1: and somehow make it back to our chairs and our
Speaker 1: deaths and presumably our families and homes. Okay, well, um,
Speaker 1: here is what many people say is the best way
Speaker 1: to solve a maze, and it's called the right hand trick.
Speaker 1: That's sometimes called the left hand trick because it doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter which hand. You just keep a hand on
Speaker 1: one wall and it doesn't matter which one, just pick
Speaker 1: left or right when you enter, and then you follow
Speaker 1: the path and keep that hand as you are following
Speaker 1: that path this way, if you get to a dead end,
Speaker 1: you can negotiate it by just following the three walls
Speaker 1: and then moving back the way that you came out,
Speaker 1: and eventually you will find the exit. This is the
Speaker 1: idea right now. This usually works with most mazes, but
Speaker 1: if the maze has a central blank area occupied by
Speaker 1: a second maze, then your toast it's not gonna work. Well. Certainly,
Speaker 1: you can follow theseus's advice and have some yarn with
Speaker 1: you or some string, and throw that behind you, and
Speaker 1: just hope that nothing is going to follow in your
Speaker 1: wake to disrupt the path you're setting for yourself. In
Speaker 1: the name of the Rose, the character of Brother William
Speaker 1: of Baskerville says, to find the way out of a labyrinth,
Speaker 1: that there is only one means. At every new junction
Speaker 1: never seen before, the path we have taken will be
Speaker 1: marked with three signs. If because of previous signs on
Speaker 1: some of the paths of the junction, you see that
Speaker 1: the junction has already been visited, you will make only
Speaker 1: one mark on the path you have taken. If all
Speaker 1: the apertures have already been marked, then you must retrace
Speaker 1: your steps. And he continues a little bit on this line,
Speaker 1: and then add so that the younger monk that he's
Speaker 1: he's taking with him on this journey says, how do
Speaker 1: you know that? Are you an expert on labyrinth? And
Speaker 1: he says, no, I'm citing an ancient text I once
Speaker 1: read and and so asked, and by observing this rule
Speaker 1: you get out and he says, almost never as far
Speaker 1: as I know, but we will still try it all
Speaker 1: the same. So, so you're gonna have to be patient
Speaker 1: with the maze, I guess it's and you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to You're gonna have to remain calm but alert, be
Speaker 1: very aware of your surroundings and uh, and don't be
Speaker 1: afraid to make some marks and notations. Um. And two
Speaker 1: other thoughts of comfort here. One is that we have
Speaker 1: learned this before. We've talked about this. Uh, that a
Speaker 1: rat's brain during sleep sometimes mimics what happens during the day.
Speaker 1: So rats and a maze, you can actually see the
Speaker 1: specific patterns of neurons fired in the rats brains while
Speaker 1: running a lab maze that appeared that day, um, and
Speaker 1: then during rem sleep for those rats. So in other words,
Speaker 1: rats can dream about the maze that they've been in
Speaker 1: and they can try to figure out a better way
Speaker 1: to approach it next time. So they can learn to
Speaker 1: navigate a maze given maze, they can actually Yeah, they
Speaker 1: can be trained to do this, and humans do. Any
Speaker 1: even who lives in a city, has learned to navigate
Speaker 1: a maze. Yeah. And part of this training, of course,
Speaker 1: has to do with rem sleep and going over this
Speaker 1: material again and again. So just that that, to me
Speaker 1: is very comforting when I think about getting out of
Speaker 1: a maze. And if you are an amazing and you're
Speaker 1: feeling lots of anks, maybe you're in a city, a
Speaker 1: new city, or a true maze itself, or you're drawing
Speaker 1: amaze or trying to get out of one that's on
Speaker 1: a piece of paper. Uh, here's what you should do.
Speaker 1: You should start to think about the Benny Hialthy music
Speaker 1: because this apparently is very helpful. I think it decreases anxiety.
Speaker 1: And I say this because I watched the clip of
Speaker 1: the Shining that was scored to the Benny Hialthy music
Speaker 1: and it was far less framing. And if you want
Speaker 1: to see that, check out the blog post that accompanies
Speaker 1: this this podcast episode. All right, well, I think I
Speaker 1: hear the minotaur calling, so we probably need to wrap
Speaker 1: this up. I do want to close out with a
Speaker 1: poem by your hey Lewis Borees, who again was obsessed
Speaker 1: with mazes and labyrinths and mirrors and all matter of
Speaker 1: mentally complex arrangements, and this is his poem called the Labyrinth,
Speaker 1: but it really sums up the feeling of being an
Speaker 1: amaze Zeus himself could not undo the way of stone
Speaker 1: closing around me. I've forgotten the men I was before.
Speaker 1: I followed the hated path of monotonous walls. That is
Speaker 1: my destiny, severe galleries which curve in secret circles to
Speaker 1: the end of the years, parapets cracked by the day's usury.
Speaker 1: In the pale dust, I have discerned signs that frightened me.
Speaker 1: In the concave evenings, the air has carried a roar
Speaker 1: toward me, or the echo of a desolate How I
Speaker 1: know there is another in the shadows whose fate it
Speaker 1: is to wear out the long solitudes which weave and
Speaker 1: unweave this hades, and to long for my blood and
Speaker 1: devour my death. Each of us seeks the other, if
Speaker 1: only this were the final day of waiting. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that that one gives me chills. All right, So hey, um,
Speaker 1: we've got a little long So we're not going to
Speaker 1: call the robot over here with the listener mail. It
Speaker 1: will take him forever to find us in this He's
Speaker 1: stuck out there in amaze any So I do want
Speaker 1: to close by saying, if you you want to reach
Speaker 1: out to us, we would love to hear from you,
Speaker 1: particularly about mazes. Is there a maze and fiction, uh
Speaker 1: that that we've neglected to mention? I'm sure there are.
Speaker 1: Let us know about them if you think they're really engaging.
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear people's thoughts on mazes and video
Speaker 1: games because I was looking around and it looks like
Speaker 1: earlier in the video game history, like up until you know,
Speaker 1: possibly the early nineties, you saw more maze games, games
Speaker 1: that were that the idea of a maze was just
Speaker 1: the very concept of the game itself. Um and our
Speaker 1: producer Matt Frederick said that I think Ultima Online had
Speaker 1: a maze in it. I'm I'm to understand that sky
Speaker 1: Rim has a maze somewhere in it, but I certainly
Speaker 1: haven't found it yet, uh, But but I just wonder
Speaker 1: it has. Is the maze in a video game? Is
Speaker 1: it's something that we've kind of forgotten. And I'm talking
Speaker 1: about an actual maze where when you're in it, whether
Speaker 1: it's an above view of the game or you're you know,
Speaker 1: third or first persons view, where you're actually confused and
Speaker 1: unable to find your way out. Just an open question,
Speaker 1: let me know what you think. So you can find
Speaker 1: us on stuff to Bowl your Mind on Facebook, you
Speaker 1: can find us has stuff to Bow your Mind and Tumbler,
Speaker 1: and you can find us as blow the Mind on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and you can always drop us a line and blow
Speaker 1: the mind at discovery dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works
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