Speaker 1: Pushkin, I can tell I already have like the nervous giggle.
Speaker 1: This is author Lee Coward. There's definitely like a danger
Speaker 1: smell to it that I come to recognize. Lee is
Speaker 1: holding an open bottle of puckabut Barms Carolina Reaverer hot sauce,
Speaker 1: thought to be the most extreme hot sauce ever created.
Speaker 1: The sauce is made of ninety percent pure Carolina Reaver pepper,
Speaker 1: the hottest hot pepper in the world. The heat levels
Speaker 1: of hot peppers are measured in scopul units. An average jalapeno,
Speaker 1: which a spice was like me can barely tolerate, will
Speaker 1: run you around three thousand scope units, but a Carolina
Speaker 1: Reaper can be up to eight hundred times hotter. Reapers
Speaker 1: are measured in the millions of scobles. When people ask
Speaker 1: me if a Reaper pepper might be for them, I say,
Speaker 1: you are the kind of person that wants to fight
Speaker 1: God and then feel like one this might be a
Speaker 1: fun event for you, And apparently fighting a deity seems
Speaker 1: like a fun time to Lee, because Lee is going
Speaker 1: to gargle Reaper hot sauce right now. Okay, do you
Speaker 1: want to want to count me? Down, three, two, one. Wow,
Speaker 1: that is a large swig. Oh my god, it feels
Speaker 1: more like a color color. Yeah. Um, it kind of
Speaker 1: tastes like I a solar flare watching that's hot for real? Ah,
Speaker 1: very truly. I would say on a scale one to ten,
Speaker 1: it's like a boat horn on a scale of one
Speaker 1: to ten. I know that in five minutes I'm gonna
Speaker 1: feel but I also know that right now I feel bad.
Speaker 1: But I also feel silly because I chose this. Much
Speaker 1: of the time, experiencing pain feels kind of crappy. We
Speaker 1: rarely seek out opportunities to stub our toes or burn
Speaker 1: our tongues or head to the dentist for root. Now,
Speaker 1: these are not experiences that we tend to describe as
Speaker 1: happiness inducing, but there are some cases in which we
Speaker 1: willingly choose to take part in situations that we know
Speaker 1: ahead of time are going to feel negative. Now, you
Speaker 1: may not have willingly gargled the hottest hot sauce on
Speaker 1: the planet, but it's likely that you or someone you
Speaker 1: know has tried a bath so scalding that it kind
Speaker 1: of hurt, or paid money for an agonizing deep tissue massage,
Speaker 1: and pain isn't the only negative feeling we sometimes seek
Speaker 1: out voluntarily. We also get pleasure from sad songs that
Speaker 1: make us cry and heart pounding roller coasters that make
Speaker 1: us queasy. We actually enjoy watching scary slasher films and
Speaker 1: visiting terrifying haunted houses. How can emotions like fear or
Speaker 1: sadness or pain become something we choose to experience? Why
Speaker 1: do painful feelings sometimes make us happier? The answer involves
Speaker 1: two of my favorite cognitive quirks, ones that are fundamental
Speaker 1: parts of being human. We're going to take a deep
Speaker 1: dive into these biases of the mind and learn how
Speaker 1: they can help us get a big happiness boost from pain, fear,
Speaker 1: and anguish. And I'll also let you in on the
Speaker 1: secret of throwing a kick ass movie party. Our minds
Speaker 1: are constantly telling us what to do to be happy.
Speaker 1: But what if our minds are wrong? What if our
Speaker 1: minds are lying to us, leading us away from what
Speaker 1: will really make us happy. The good news is that
Speaker 1: understanding the science of the mind can point us all
Speaker 1: back in the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab on Doctor Laurie Santos. Oh, Oh that's fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I struck good. Now, about ten minutes into gargling the
Speaker 1: hottest hot sauce in existence, Lee Howard has now switched
Speaker 1: from experiencing extreme discomfort to a feeling they describe as
Speaker 1: far more pleasurable. So I'm still in a lot of pain,
Speaker 1: but I also feel exceptional. I feel like I've just
Speaker 1: run five miles. I feel like I love my job.
Speaker 1: What's this job that Lee loves so much? I am
Speaker 1: not a pepperhead. I am just an idiot. Lee is
Speaker 1: a science journalist an author of Hurt So Good, The
Speaker 1: Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose. But the book
Speaker 1: is about masochism, and I think reading the book is
Speaker 1: a little bit of a masochistic act. Unto itself, Lee
Speaker 1: wanted to understand why people engage in all manner of
Speaker 1: painful behaviors, from chili pepper eating to polar plunges to
Speaker 1: painful b d SM sex play. So they decided to
Speaker 1: run a little experiment and try out all these behaviors personally.
Speaker 1: The result is a book that is not for the
Speaker 1: faint of heart. I mean, there are sex scenes, it's
Speaker 1: a lot, But Lee engaged in these activities not just
Speaker 1: as some journalistic exercise. Please actually kinda into pain. Oh yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I am a big fan and that was really interesting
Speaker 1: to me, Like, why do we like pains sometimes? What
Speaker 1: are we getting out of it? And what does that
Speaker 1: say about us as people? When it comes to bodily sensations,
Speaker 1: we often assume that some are good whereas others are bad.
Speaker 1: Eating a sweet ice cream cone good. Eating a pepper
Speaker 1: so hot that it burns the inside of your solar
Speaker 1: plexus bad. But the science shows that whether a given
Speaker 1: experience winds up feeling good or bad is much more complicated.
Speaker 1: It's based on memory, It's based on where you are,
Speaker 1: Are you expecting it? Are you safe? Do you want this?
Speaker 1: Are you aroused? All of these factors come together and
Speaker 1: you get a fresh sensory experience every time. And Lee
Speaker 1: is quick to point out that there is one necessary
Speaker 1: factor for any sensation to feel good. Pain on purpose
Speaker 1: requires consent. You have to be able to opt into
Speaker 1: it and opt out. But why would we willingly opt
Speaker 1: into experiencing pain and other negative emotions? Why does pain
Speaker 1: sometimes make us happier? The first reason involves how pain
Speaker 1: works biologically. Experiencing physical harm quite literally drugs us up.
Speaker 1: You know what we call endorphins is short for endogenous morphine.
Speaker 1: Whenever we get hurt, our body releases natural opiates akin
Speaker 1: to morphine, OxyContin and heroine. Natural versions of these chemicals
Speaker 1: quickly flought our brain and bind to neural receptors that
Speaker 1: would normally make us experience a negative sensation, and just
Speaker 1: like taking a hit of actual heroin, our natural endorphins
Speaker 1: make us feel very good pretty quickly. But endorphins are
Speaker 1: only the first of our bodies two biological systems for
Speaker 1: soothing us when we get hurt. We also get a
Speaker 1: bong hit from pain because the endorphin system works alongside
Speaker 1: another set of analgesics known as the endocannabinoid system. It's
Speaker 1: just kind of like the weed version in Layman's terms.
Speaker 1: These two inner pain killer systems mean that we experience
Speaker 1: a literal high whenever we're in pain. But there's also
Speaker 1: a second reason that chosen pain can feel good. Pain
Speaker 1: can be a shortcut to a happiness inducing practice that
Speaker 1: we talk about a lot on this podcast, Mindfulness. There's
Speaker 1: tons of evidence suggesting that being in the present moment
Speaker 1: feels great, and at least one nice thing about anguish
Speaker 1: is that it's cognitively all consuming. It is very, very
Speaker 1: hard to think about your grocery list when your whole
Speaker 1: faces are on fire. I mean that is such a
Speaker 1: draw for me personally, I have one of those just
Speaker 1: like hamster reel braids. There's just like forty hamsters up
Speaker 1: there and none of them are cooperating. So for me,
Speaker 1: the quiet of one thought in the brain is something
Speaker 1: that I chase, and masochism is absolutely a shortcut to
Speaker 1: that piece. But there's a third reason that pain and
Speaker 1: other negative sensations feel good. Bad feelings create a please
Speaker 1: in contrast effect. Brief moments of anguish or fear allow
Speaker 1: us to go from a sucky state to a much
Speaker 1: nicer baseline state, and the contrast between these two sensations
Speaker 1: makes our status quo, our norm which probably seemed boring
Speaker 1: or unremarkable before, now feel like absolute heaven. Negative states
Speaker 1: also induce pleasure because they make us feel kind of badass.
Speaker 1: When our body senses danger or incoming pain, our usual
Speaker 1: response is to get the heck away from whatever situation
Speaker 1: we're in. When we push through fear and pain, we
Speaker 1: can get a sort of mind over matter hit of pride.
Speaker 1: Watch a bunny that gets away from a hawk right,
Speaker 1: they bounced away. There's a discharge, there's a celebration. The
Speaker 1: badass feeling that comes from making it through something awful
Speaker 1: is one reason Lee has long been drawn to voluntary suffering.
Speaker 1: I like to push it. I like to see how
Speaker 1: much I can take. I definitely have a resilience fetish.
Speaker 1: But it's worth noting that the positive hit we can
Speaker 1: get from chosen pain doesn't require putting ourselves in actual
Speaker 1: physical danger. We just need to do something that our
Speaker 1: brain will falsely interpret as perilous. It's what the psychologist
Speaker 1: Paul Rosen christened benign massochism. Benign masochism is a mental
Speaker 1: trick in which our brain's natural danger systems get fooled
Speaker 1: by harmless stuff that mimics what we might experience if
Speaker 1: we went through a real physical ordeal. Benign massochism allows
Speaker 1: us to get all the psychological benefits that come from
Speaker 1: bodily harm without the bodily harm, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: But a word of warning, benign masochism isn't something to
Speaker 1: be entered into lightly. You don't want to embark on
Speaker 1: an experience that's too painfully intense or that is genuinely dangerous.
Speaker 1: Take chili eating. For example, you may have noticed that
Speaker 1: Lee chose to gargle rather than swallow that Carolina Reaper
Speaker 1: hot sauce. It is a different animal them. Lee made
Speaker 1: that rookie mistake early on in their chili tasting experiments,
Speaker 1: and their digestive system paid the price. Oh it's awful.
Speaker 1: I was like nude on a bathroom floor, weeping and
Speaker 1: just chastising myself. Why did you do this? You know, honestly,
Speaker 1: it felt like labor. And you do have all of
Speaker 1: those TRPV one receptors in your anus, so you're going
Speaker 1: to have the reaper pepper experience in your own little
Speaker 1: ring of fire. I actually spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: trying to warn people about it, just so you know
Speaker 1: this is a very possible outcome for a hypochondriact like me.
Speaker 1: This felt like a deal breaker. I'll definitely leave the
Speaker 1: hot sauce tasting to Lee. So what if you're curious
Speaker 1: about the emotional benefits of negative experiences but you're a
Speaker 1: huge voice. What if you'd like to get the mindfulness
Speaker 1: that a Carolina Reaper provides, but you've got a sensitive constitution, Well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment.
Speaker 1: You want to live a rich, fun life. There's a
Speaker 1: whole lot of emotions to play with, and I aren't
Speaker 1: necessarily what you think they are. This is my good friend.
Speaker 1: Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at the University of
Speaker 1: Toronto an author of The Sweet Spot The Pleasures are
Speaker 1: Suffering in the search for meeting. Like Journalistly Coward, Paul
Speaker 1: is interested in why we sometimes get pleasure from pain.
Speaker 1: Some pleasures are we could talk a lot about them,
Speaker 1: but it's not so mysterious why people enjoy good food
Speaker 1: and good drink and sex. But if a smart alien
Speaker 1: came down to Earth, what they would see is they
Speaker 1: see us spending hours and hours watching movies and reading
Speaker 1: novels that make us cry. That's scare us. They see
Speaker 1: us going to saunaus. They see us engaging in BDSM
Speaker 1: and Alians say, what's up of that? It seems so paradoxical,
Speaker 1: and as paradox is what I'm really interested in. But
Speaker 1: in contrast, Elite Paul has taken a more academic approach
Speaker 1: to this paradox. We cover the same topics, and I
Speaker 1: have a lot of admiration for what they've written. But
Speaker 1: there's a kind of different register. I'm a little bit
Speaker 1: more bourgeois and state in my lifestyle. But Paul's book
Speaker 1: argues that the bourgeois and wooses among us aren't totally
Speaker 1: out of luck when it comes to the pleasure of
Speaker 1: negative emotions. It turns out that the human mind has
Speaker 1: figured out an enterprising way to get all the emotional
Speaker 1: benefits of bad sensations without any of the real life risk.
Speaker 1: We simply experience negative events as simulations inside our heads.
Speaker 1: We avitabilities or to play movies to ourselves and tell
Speaker 1: stories to ourselves and appreciate these stories that other people
Speaker 1: telling and immerse ourselves in worlds we know aren't real.
Speaker 1: And our capacity for imagination doesn't just allow us to
Speaker 1: experience stuff that we come up with in our own
Speaker 1: private simulations. We also participate in entire shared fictional emotional
Speaker 1: worlds think movies, books, or video games, and these worlds
Speaker 1: give us a really wide range of negative emotions, from
Speaker 1: fear to grief, to disgust to anger, all without any
Speaker 1: danger of personal harm. No burning gums from chili peppers,
Speaker 1: no queasy stomach from a roller coaster ride for self
Speaker 1: proclaimed was like me, this version of negative experiences is way,
Speaker 1: way better, and Paul argues that the suffering we experience
Speaker 1: in our imagination has lots of unique benefits that go
Speaker 1: beyond those that come from in real life forms of
Speaker 1: benign masochism. One is the emotional control we have over
Speaker 1: what happens in fantasy. If the hot pepper you just
Speaker 1: date is too much, you're kind of stuck with it
Speaker 1: until it passes through your entire digestive tract and pass
Speaker 1: those Anis receptors. But if a fictional experience starts to
Speaker 1: feel like it's too much, you can stop immediately. Your
Speaker 1: novel's feeling too sad, put it down, too freaked out
Speaker 1: by that slasher film, shut it off. And thanks to
Speaker 1: reviews and ratings in word of mouth, we usually know
Speaker 1: exactly what we're getting ourselves into. There's a feature on
Speaker 1: Slate which goes through different horror movies. Is how scary
Speaker 1: is this? And they have sort of how gory is?
Speaker 1: And so on? And somebody like me, who's surprising a
Speaker 1: little bit of a whimp when it comes to gore,
Speaker 1: likes these things. I don't want to be too grossed out.
Speaker 1: Simulated negative experiences like watching a tense car chase or
Speaker 1: a scary disaster movie can also be incredible teachers. Imagining
Speaker 1: negative events is the human equivalent of what animals do
Speaker 1: when they learn to fight. One way to be good
Speaker 1: at fighting is to practice fighting. But the problem of
Speaker 1: getting a lot of fights is you can get killed.
Speaker 1: Are you going to kill somebody else? So evolution came
Speaker 1: up this brilliant trick. Young animals engage in a milder,
Speaker 1: pretend version of aggression, which researchers call play fighting. They
Speaker 1: try out all their aggressive moves while playing with their friends,
Speaker 1: but they never take it to the level where anyone
Speaker 1: gets hurt. They get all the benefits of practicing with
Speaker 1: none of the dangers. Human kids do the same thing
Speaker 1: when they're little. Think plastic army toys battling it out
Speaker 1: or barbie dolls pretending to be part of real life
Speaker 1: social interactions. But we don't entirely leave this behind in childhood.
Speaker 1: Adults do this in our own heads. I think what
Speaker 1: a lot of imaginative play is, particularly the sort of
Speaker 1: more negative stuff we're talking about, is a form of
Speaker 1: planning and preparation and practice for the future. Paul uses
Speaker 1: the analogy of learning how to fly a plane. The
Speaker 1: best way to become a good pilot is to guide
Speaker 1: a real plane through lots of real world situations of
Speaker 1: varying difficulty. But it's extremely dangerous, so we've invented flight simulators.
Speaker 1: Flight simulators allow us to sit in a pretend cockpit
Speaker 1: and practice all the controls needed for a real flight,
Speaker 1: but without any of the real danger. And when you're
Speaker 1: programming a flight simulator, you don't program it always for
Speaker 1: a flight. Your program it for trouble. And I think
Speaker 1: imaginations like a flight simulator. And just as flight simulators
Speaker 1: actively seek out trouble, so too do we seek out
Speaker 1: negative imaginary experiences and the emotions that go with them.
Speaker 1: This logic can explain even the seemingly oddest of negative
Speaker 1: fantasies that we in the modern world seek out all
Speaker 1: the time. Take zombie movies. Do wel like zombie movies
Speaker 1: because we have to prepare for the zombie apocalypse, And
Speaker 1: that sounds stupid, But anybody who see zombie movies knows
Speaker 1: that the real dangerneys movies is in a zombie. Zombie
Speaker 1: movies are just a very imaginative recreation of what happens
Speaker 1: when world goes down. The real dangers in the doombie
Speaker 1: movie is always other people, and so we enjoy these
Speaker 1: things in the same way kids enjoy playfighting because it's
Speaker 1: kind of verse of it. It's good stuff to get
Speaker 1: good at. But the fact that our minds get so
Speaker 1: much pleasure from fictional worlds like these also poses a
Speaker 1: bit of a cognitive puzzle. It makes sense that our
Speaker 1: brains fall for in real life forms of benign masochism,
Speaker 1: that the pain of a hot chili pepper or the
Speaker 1: fear of a racing roller coaster fools our minds into
Speaker 1: thinking that we're in danger. But how do we fall
Speaker 1: for situations that we know are completely fake things like
Speaker 1: novels and movies and video games. To get the answer,
Speaker 1: will meet a philosopher and Happiness Lab regular who's not
Speaker 1: only figured it out, but can share some tips on
Speaker 1: how applying this knowledge can give us a way bigger
Speaker 1: happiness hit, even from a totally phony looking mechanical shark.
Speaker 1: That's the sound? What's that one? Do? I think it's
Speaker 1: both just that I can't carry it. Dune, dune, Dune.
Speaker 1: That was what I meant. The Happiness Lab will be
Speaker 1: right back. It's July twenty twenty one, Tokyo, Japan and
Speaker 1: the Summer Olympics are finally underway. Today's matchup, the US
Speaker 1: women's soccer team is taking on their rivals Sweden. Dear Things,
Speaker 1: The Olympic announcer booms, Welcome to the Tokyo Stadium. The
Speaker 1: announcer introduces the two teams. As the players take the field,
Speaker 1: the hype music begins to play, and the crowd goes wild,
Speaker 1: or perhaps more accurately, what sounded like a crowd goes wild.
Speaker 1: The Olympic athletes who heard that roar, we're hearing a recording.
Speaker 1: There was no one else in the stadium with them.
Speaker 1: The Tokyo Games had already been delayed by a year
Speaker 1: because of COVID nineteen, but with infections still surging in
Speaker 1: the summer of twenty twenty one, no spectators were allowed
Speaker 1: into the venues. But the organizers still wanted to bring
Speaker 1: the vibe of the world to the stadium, as they
Speaker 1: put it, so they commissioned a virtual soundscape experience for
Speaker 1: their athletes. They piped the sounds of a screaming crowd
Speaker 1: into the empty stadium. Audio engineers spent three months clipping
Speaker 1: together screams and applause from past Olympics in Rio and London.
Speaker 1: They worked to find just the right balance of different
Speaker 1: crowd sounds, from cheering to chatting to screaming. But the
Speaker 1: decision to spent all this time and effort to fake
Speaker 1: the sounds of adoring fans should seem, at least with
Speaker 1: some reflection, kind of weird. So you're an athlete, which
Speaker 1: means you're super sensitive to the reality of the environment
Speaker 1: around you. They knew that the stadium was empty, They
Speaker 1: knew it was the middle of COVID. They knew they
Speaker 1: were the only ones in this place, that there wasn't
Speaker 1: an audience of tens of thousands of people. Yet even so,
Speaker 1: the sound of the roaring crowd somehow managed to inspire them,
Speaker 1: even though they knew that it wasn't recording. This is
Speaker 1: my good friend and colleague, the Yale philosopher to Mark Gendler.
Speaker 1: Tomorrow's philosophical work has explored cases like these situations in
Speaker 1: which pretend things like the roar of a recorded crowd
Speaker 1: affect how we feel and behave. It's really funny to
Speaker 1: think that you can simultaneously know that something is fake
Speaker 1: and respond to it as if it were real. But
Speaker 1: when you start to realize that that's a possibility, you
Speaker 1: realize that it happens all the time. Take horror movies.
Speaker 1: The last time you sat down with your popcorn in
Speaker 1: a dark movie theater, you definitely knew that the two
Speaker 1: D images of zombies and monster attacks you saw on
Speaker 1: screen were fake, but you nonetheless responded as if that
Speaker 1: thing kind of were really happening, even though you knew
Speaker 1: that it wasn't. And that happens all the time. Think
Speaker 1: about how you cry during movie these how you laugh
Speaker 1: during movies. You know that those things aren't happening, and
Speaker 1: even as you know those things aren't happening, you respond
Speaker 1: as if they were. So the thing that was going
Speaker 1: on with the athletes actually turns out to be a
Speaker 1: really common experience in our interactions with fiction, and that
Speaker 1: common experience stems from the second cognitive quirk I wanted
Speaker 1: to explore in this episode, which is that, surprisingly, our
Speaker 1: mind seemed to work on two different and completely separate
Speaker 1: tracks when it comes to processing information. The first track,
Speaker 1: the belief track, is pretty rational. The belief track can say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, it sounds like there's a crowd screaming, But
Speaker 1: the seats are empty, and therefore I believe that no
Speaker 1: one is in the stadium. Beliefs go and take into
Speaker 1: consideration the full array of information, so they might say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sad, but in fact that was just a fictional character.
Speaker 1: I don't believe that somebody I love has died. I've
Speaker 1: just read a book in which that happened. But we
Speaker 1: also have a second track that Tamar christened the A
Speaker 1: leaf track. The A and A leaf stands for automatic,
Speaker 1: affective and ancient our. A leaf track is a much
Speaker 1: more primitive system our. A leaves just assume whatever sensory
Speaker 1: information you happen to be experiencing reflects the real world
Speaker 1: thing that that sensory experience is normally associated with. They
Speaker 1: just give a quick response. They don't do a huge
Speaker 1: amount of processing, and they're very emotional. Oh, scary music,
Speaker 1: scary sound, feels scared. The A leaf system is what
Speaker 1: allowed those Olympic athletes to get an emotional boost from
Speaker 1: crowd noise, even though they were totally aware that the
Speaker 1: stadium was empty. They knew it wasn't a real crowd
Speaker 1: of screaming fans. But they have a whole set of
Speaker 1: associations that got activated as the result of their hearing
Speaker 1: this sound that, in all other circumstances is associated with
Speaker 1: genuinely being in that environment. So it wasn't so much
Speaker 1: as they got fooled, as it was that they responded
Speaker 1: in the way they would have if it were real,
Speaker 1: even though they knew it wasn't real. But the coolest
Speaker 1: thing about this two track cognitive quirk is that the
Speaker 1: two tracks are totally separate. Your rational beliefs simply cannot
Speaker 1: interfere with your overly emotional A leafs, And if you
Speaker 1: start thinking about it, you realize that there's time after
Speaker 1: time after time where you have a beliaf that goes
Speaker 1: one way and an A leaf that goes another. Let's
Speaker 1: take horror movies again. When you watch a slasher flick
Speaker 1: and a plush seat in some suburban movie theater, your
Speaker 1: belief track knows that you're not going to get chainsaw
Speaker 1: to death by some fake monster, But your A leaf track,
Speaker 1: which controls your automatic emotional responses, can't talk to the
Speaker 1: belief track. Your A leafs are going to continuously make
Speaker 1: your body react as if you were in a dangerous situation.
Speaker 1: And it's not just with regard to danger that a
Speaker 1: leaf can do this as we read fiction or watch
Speaker 1: a movie, or listen to a story, or a leaf
Speaker 1: system is totally indifferent to whether the source of the
Speaker 1: input is actual or imaginary. The quirk of having a
Speaker 1: mind that runs on two tracks means that we have
Speaker 1: an a leaf system that allows us to get benign masochism.
Speaker 1: Happiness benefits from all kinds of situations that our belief
Speaker 1: system knows are imaginary or totally fake. So these are
Speaker 1: safe spaces in which to experience really powerful emotions without
Speaker 1: having to have the actual world consequences. And one of
Speaker 1: the really amazing things is that we can playfully engage
Speaker 1: with the multiplicity in our mind, so we can simultaneously
Speaker 1: be sitting comfortably on a sofa and physically believe ourselves
Speaker 1: to be completely safe, and then indulge imaginatively these more
Speaker 1: primitive parts of our system. We can also carefully tailor
Speaker 1: the way our a leaf track reacts, adjust it up
Speaker 1: or down depending on the degree of emotions we'd most
Speaker 1: enjoy experiencing. For example, Tamarrow, like me, isn't a fan
Speaker 1: of intense negative emotions. I'm a total scared to get,
Speaker 1: which means that she wants to indulge in negative emotions
Speaker 1: like fear, but she only wants a teeny dose. So
Speaker 1: when I watch a horror movie, I actually tend to
Speaker 1: keep the light on in the room and make the
Speaker 1: screen quite small, so that even as I'm indulging the
Speaker 1: a leaf, I have lots of bee leaf pushing in
Speaker 1: the opposite direction in the background. And that is a
Speaker 1: tactic you can use if you're somebody who's hyper sensitive
Speaker 1: to the ways in which imaginative emotion affects you. But
Speaker 1: of course, if your friends who are notices and kind
Speaker 1: of into horror movies are coming over and you want
Speaker 1: to give them a happiness boost that comes with a
Speaker 1: particularly epic scare. That also means that if we understand
Speaker 1: our a leafs the right way, we can do the opposite,
Speaker 1: which is we can make something really really scary. Right,
Speaker 1: we could make something believably scary if we know if,
Speaker 1: for example, we take away almost all of the clues
Speaker 1: that make you realize there's a differentiation between your automatic
Speaker 1: response to what seems to be the case and what
Speaker 1: is actually the case, we can make something really really scary,
Speaker 1: which got me thinking, what if instead of just hosting
Speaker 1: the usual scary movie party from my friends. What have
Speaker 1: I decided to up the benign masochism A Leaf stakes
Speaker 1: a bit? What if I put my horror movie loving
Speaker 1: friends into a fully immersive, real world situation that activated
Speaker 1: every single one of their senses to fully and completely
Speaker 1: whig out their A Leaf track. And so Laurie's epic
Speaker 1: extreme A Leaf movie experience was born, or what I
Speaker 1: like to call more simply Jaws in the Pool. Instead
Speaker 1: of inviting my friends to watch that classic shark film
Speaker 1: on a couch and my living I forced each friend
Speaker 1: to watch Jaws and my friend Hetty's Backyard on a
Speaker 1: big screen at night as they sat in an inflatable
Speaker 1: inner tube floating in Hetty's pool, dark wet legs dangling
Speaker 1: helplessly in the water. So I threw my Jaws in
Speaker 1: the Pool party for my birthday, and as predicted, it
Speaker 1: was epic, a huge, terrifying, benign masochism benefit filled success. Oh,
Speaker 1: it was so much scarier watching it on the water.
Speaker 1: Even though many of my friends had seen the movie before,
Speaker 1: their experience with Jaws in the pool was way way
Speaker 1: more intense. Added to the experience, like you really can't
Speaker 1: see through the water that wall at night and we're
Speaker 1: in it. My friends agreed that those big on screen
Speaker 1: shark teeth seemed way more dangerous when your toes are
Speaker 1: submerged in a dark pool of water. I had my
Speaker 1: legs in the water, and every time the shark came,
Speaker 1: I pulled them out and pick up. Our a leaf
Speaker 1: track to epic levels made the normal negative experience of
Speaker 1: Jaws way way more fun, And there's an important lesson there.
Speaker 1: Using the quirks of our mind to hack our negative
Speaker 1: experiences can give us a lot more joy and happiness.
Speaker 1: Human emotional life is complicated. We often get more pleasure
Speaker 1: from seemingly yucky sensations like fear or pain or sadness
Speaker 1: than we might expect, and that means that it's a
Speaker 1: good happiness practice to play with your negative emotions a bit,
Speaker 1: to safely test out feelings of anguish or grief or terror.
Speaker 1: For some thrill seekers, this might include chasing the unique
Speaker 1: emotional high of a Carolina Reaper pepper. That's fun. But
Speaker 1: for the wosses among us, there's our a leaf track,
Speaker 1: which allows us to get pleasure without any real pain,
Speaker 1: from completely imagined negative experiences. So how will you as
Speaker 1: Tomar Gendler put it, playfully engage with the multiplicity of
Speaker 1: your own mind. What new benign pains or imagine situations
Speaker 1: or scary fictional world will you try out to get
Speaker 1: the happiness perks that come from experiencing a more complete
Speaker 1: range of human emotions. Personally, I highly recommend experiences involve
Speaker 1: extreme fear and swimming pools and inflatable sharks if at
Speaker 1: all possible, But you know, to each his own. I
Speaker 1: hope you'll return soon for another episode of The Happiness Lab.
Speaker 1: Until next time, stay safe, stay scared, and stay happy.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley,
Speaker 1: Emily Anne Vaughan, and Courtney Guerino. Joseph Friedman checked our facts.
Speaker 1: Our original music was composed by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring,
Speaker 1: mixing and mastering by Evan Viola. Special thanks to Milabelle
Speaker 1: Heather Fame, John Schnars, Carli Migliori, Christina Sullivan, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Nicole Morano, Royston Deserved, Jacob Weisberg, and my
Speaker 1: agent Ben Davis. That Happiness Lab is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries and me Doctor Laurie Santos. To find
Speaker 1: more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your podcasts.