Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles w. Cute as a button Bryant, and there's
Speaker 1: Jerry squee rolland and this is stuff you should know
Speaker 1: of the podcast. A cute addition, that's right, the science
Speaker 1: a cute. Yeah, I'm excited about this when I've been
Speaker 1: wanting to do it for a while. I remember, like
Speaker 1: that was one of the first things you ever said
Speaker 1: to me when we met in the office, how cute
Speaker 1: you are? Well? No, we were in the break room
Speaker 1: and I saw a picture of a baby panda and
Speaker 1: I just started to melt, and you went, hey, jerk,
Speaker 1: you ever wonder why you think things are cute? I
Speaker 1: bet there's science behind that. Maybe we should talk about
Speaker 1: it one day, and look here we are. What was that,
Speaker 1: well thirteen years ago almost man, you really responded to
Speaker 1: that aggression into so chuck. Have you ever heard of
Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse? Oh? I know several mice, but I've never
Speaker 1: heard of Mickey Mouse. You've only heard of Modeled Muck
Speaker 1: and Ricky Rouse. Um, well, let me tell you about
Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse. He's actually the mascot of a very large
Speaker 1: entertainment corporation called Disney. Uh. They own Walt Disney World,
Speaker 1: Walt Disneyland. I think ABC owns them. They're they're affiliated
Speaker 1: with ESPN. They're very, very big. But they have this mascot.
Speaker 1: It's a mouse and his name's Mickey. He's he's kind
Speaker 1: of big, especially abroad. Um. But if you look at
Speaker 1: Mickey today, you think, wow, that's a really cute mouse.
Speaker 1: Doesn't really look like a mouse. He's black and white
Speaker 1: basically are brownish and black. Um. But also his few
Speaker 1: teachers are very much not mouse like. But if you
Speaker 1: were to go back and look at the beginning of Mickey,
Speaker 1: I think he's from the nine twenties, like nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: In his earliest cartoons, he looked a lot more mousey
Speaker 1: like cartoon mouse, but he had, you know, his pointed features,
Speaker 1: not nearly as cute. But then if you fast forward
Speaker 1: about ten years later, by the time rolls around and
Speaker 1: he's in something called The Brave Taylor that was one
Speaker 1: of his shorts, UM where I think he defeats a
Speaker 1: giant or something like that. Um, he looks full blown
Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse, but he looks way cuter and they had
Speaker 1: done a few things to him. They had like made
Speaker 1: his eyes bigger, they've made his features rounder less pointed. Um,
Speaker 1: he had big gloves and big shoes. Now he's kind
Speaker 1: of plump and oversized features, and he had gotten cute.
Speaker 1: And the scientist Stephen Jay Gould, who really deserves his
Speaker 1: own episode like Carl Sagan does, Um, just a really
Speaker 1: interesting dude. Um. He said that Disney and his animators
Speaker 1: had stumbled upon something that the zoologists and mythologist Conrad
Speaker 1: Lawrence UM termed can can schema. I think I got
Speaker 1: that right right. Uh yeah, can can schema very nice. Um.
Speaker 1: But like years before Conrad Lawrence ever did that, they
Speaker 1: had just kind of naturally figured out like, oh, this
Speaker 1: can be way more appealing if we if we exaggerate
Speaker 1: these particular features. And it turns out what they had
Speaker 1: done is make him literally cut by the very scientific
Speaker 1: definition of cuteness. Yeah. So Lawrence was an Austrian scientist
Speaker 1: and in the forties came up with this. And this
Speaker 1: made me feel quite good about myself actually looking over
Speaker 1: this list about physical qualities that um, and it's not
Speaker 1: just a person came me an animal. As we'll see
Speaker 1: a lot of this is animal based. But these things,
Speaker 1: these traits that would evoke a positive response, a very
Speaker 1: strong positive response, and they are large head. M that's me, um,
Speaker 1: high protruding forehead. I've always said you have a five head.
Speaker 1: If any, it's it's average, large eyes, sort of average,
Speaker 1: chubby cheeks bingo. Oh, you should make the cheeks make
Speaker 1: a sonic appearance. Very nice. It's been years, still as
Speaker 1: moist as ever. Sorry, everyone. Uh, chubby cheeks, small nose,
Speaker 1: I'm an average nose, small mouth, and chin I'd say
Speaker 1: average short, thick extremities, actually have sort of skinny legs.
Speaker 1: I'll carry my weight between my chin and my belt.
Speaker 1: Plump body shape. Bingo. So I am scientifically half cute.
Speaker 1: You are very cute. I mean that's definitely. It's not
Speaker 1: even up for debate. Really, I used to get called
Speaker 1: cute by the ladies. Not handsome, but cute. There's definitely
Speaker 1: I saw that. Um. Paul McCartney hated being known as
Speaker 1: the cute beetle, probably for the same you know, the
Speaker 1: same differences that you just mentioned, probably, but the the
Speaker 1: like what you just said, this list you just you
Speaker 1: just um you rattled off. That is Lawrence's kinkin schema
Speaker 1: or baby schema or baby nous, which is basically like,
Speaker 1: if you put all these things together, you have what
Speaker 1: amounts to what we humans consider cute, and you can extrapolate,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, not just onto babies, but onto
Speaker 1: other animals and even onto like cartoon characters. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: either have these things and you're regarded as cute, or
Speaker 1: you don't and you're not exactly. Yeah, that's a really
Speaker 1: good point that you can you can not only have this,
Speaker 1: you can also lack it, and that that has that
Speaker 1: modulates our response to whatever that thing is. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's also important to point out that this is these
Speaker 1: are guidelines, scientific sort of guidelines and truisms, but not
Speaker 1: across the board like some people. Beauty is in the
Speaker 1: eye of the beholder and cuteness is sure, So some
Speaker 1: people might look at a baby, I don't know, just
Speaker 1: some sort of weird reptilian thing that has none of
Speaker 1: these traits and think it's super cute as well. Right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is kind of subjective, but there does seem to
Speaker 1: be um if not universal or widely tapped into sense
Speaker 1: of what's cute and what's not. You know what, I mean, yeah, still,
Speaker 1: let me rephrase that the person that thinks the baby
Speaker 1: lizard that has none of these traits is cute, they
Speaker 1: probably also think the panda is cute, right, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Right, Yeah, they're probably not disgusted or
Speaker 1: just totally turn off that dirty, ugly baby kitten. And
Speaker 1: so so Lawrence was um. He compiled this list based
Speaker 1: on his observations, and I guess from what I read,
Speaker 1: like this whole study of cuteness is pretty young as
Speaker 1: far as scientific investigation goes, So you know that we're
Speaker 1: still figuring it out. It's still developing as it goes along.
Speaker 1: Some of the study is involved or fairly suspect, but
Speaker 1: there seems to be this this kind of general acceptance
Speaker 1: of Lawrenz's k Kinkin schema, which is that it was
Speaker 1: just it's so it's so obviously correct that from what
Speaker 1: I read, some people just haven't even investigated, which is
Speaker 1: good and bad. Um. Lawrence was a behaviorist and he
Speaker 1: actually we met him first in our animal imprinting episode,
Speaker 1: which was a really good one, but he studied that, um.
Speaker 1: But he put this all together to study behaviors, and
Speaker 1: what he was studying is exactly how babies UM get
Speaker 1: adult humans who may not even be their parents to
Speaker 1: respond to them in a way that um, that adult
Speaker 1: wants to take care of that baby. And what he
Speaker 1: what he came up with was this kinkin schema cuteness. Uh.
Speaker 1: What he said unlocks um innate instincts in humans that
Speaker 1: basically triggers like automatic behaviors like oh, I want to
Speaker 1: make sure that you stay alive, so I'm going to
Speaker 1: go find you some food that kind of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it corresponds to helplessness at birth. There's a direct
Speaker 1: correlation between um, how cute you look and how how
Speaker 1: little you can get buy in your own In the
Speaker 1: animal kingdom, um, most mammals are born very small, very helpless.
Speaker 1: Uh many months sometimes weeks, sometimes months, sometimes years of
Speaker 1: care before they can go off and kind of do
Speaker 1: their own thing. That's called altricial. What to take to
Speaker 1: being born helpless? You're altricial. Yeah, so if you're altricial,
Speaker 1: you're probably almost more cute than an animal that is
Speaker 1: born that can kind of run right out and do
Speaker 1: things on their own, probably not as cute. That's precociale
Speaker 1: altricial and precocial, right, and and the thing is is like,
Speaker 1: if you step back, like it's just so easy to
Speaker 1: just overlook this, and if you really start to think
Speaker 1: about this, cuteness has been this adaptive, I guess, evolutionary
Speaker 1: trait that's just been hiding and plain sight until Lawrence
Speaker 1: really put his finger on it. But if you step
Speaker 1: back and think about it, there's no there's no innate
Speaker 1: or there's no reason that a baby has in and
Speaker 1: of itself to evoke a response and a human even
Speaker 1: its parents, um to want to take care of it,
Speaker 1: but it needs that because it is an altricial species.
Speaker 1: Humans are an altricial species. They'll they'll just die out
Speaker 1: if you don't take care of a baby, and if
Speaker 1: enough babies die out, eventually humanity dies out, the species
Speaker 1: dies out. So it's an adaptation to make somebody want
Speaker 1: to take care of you. And that is what Lawrence
Speaker 1: figured out. That cuteness is that trigger that we find
Speaker 1: babies cute and it makes us want to take care
Speaker 1: of them. And that is one of the most mind
Speaker 1: blowing things I know. Yeah, I mean if you look
Speaker 1: at human babies. Human babies are born pretty early in
Speaker 1: their development, like if um all things being equal. Human
Speaker 1: babies should probably be born six months later than they are,
Speaker 1: but they're not. Human babies come out very early. They
Speaker 1: come out before their little fontanelles are even formed, and
Speaker 1: they need a lot of care and uh, they're they're
Speaker 1: born that Like, human babies are small so they can
Speaker 1: fit out of the birth canal. Their little noses are
Speaker 1: cartilage so they don't get broken on the way out.
Speaker 1: Like you know, babies should have larger heads and should
Speaker 1: have like that should but you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: fully formed like strong noses, but they wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to to come out of a lady if that was
Speaker 1: the case. Yeah, because our brains are have have developed
Speaker 1: to be so big, and our craniums have developed in
Speaker 1: in response to that that like we're evolutionarily speaking or
Speaker 1: developmentally speaking, we're underdeveloped when we're born, even though we're
Speaker 1: we would have been born at like a normal normal
Speaker 1: gestation period for a human compared to other species. It's
Speaker 1: like you're, this kid's out a little. This kid hasn't
Speaker 1: baked fully, you know what I'm saying. And so that
Speaker 1: really makes human babies even among you know, other mammals
Speaker 1: that are altricial super dependent on caregivers to make sure
Speaker 1: that it survives. Yeah. So, like a human baby's head
Speaker 1: is really large compared to their body. Um, and these
Speaker 1: are you know, these are some of the cuteness traits
Speaker 1: that we mentioned early. On their eyes. You know, your
Speaker 1: eyes don't really grow. Your eyes are about the same size.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that, did you. Yeah, that's why when
Speaker 1: you look at some babies and you're like, look how
Speaker 1: huge their eyes are, it's just because they're on a
Speaker 1: little tiny face. It makes sense, But I just had
Speaker 1: never known that you're born basically the size that they're
Speaker 1: going to be when you grow up. I think if
Speaker 1: you really work them out, they can beef up a
Speaker 1: little bit. Though. We mentioned those tiny little noses super
Speaker 1: cute and very bendy. Um, they're little baby cheeks and
Speaker 1: everything soft so you can get out of that birth canal.
Speaker 1: And you know, formula and mother's milk keep you kind
Speaker 1: of chunky and full. Um. You know, nobody's gonna put
Speaker 1: a baby on a diet, no good lord, no. Um.
Speaker 1: The skin is very loosed and soft. H. So you know,
Speaker 1: if you go through a big gross spurt, it doesn't
Speaker 1: you know, split open sounds gross. Uh, and then you
Speaker 1: know the way babies move, it's just just very cute there.
Speaker 1: Babies are awkward and they're clumsy, and um, they don't
Speaker 1: like have the definition to like manipulate these these muscle
Speaker 1: groups very well. Yet Yeah, and it's awkward and gawky
Speaker 1: and super cute. All of this stuff together is cute
Speaker 1: to us. And it raises the question, like, did babies
Speaker 1: evolved human babies evolved to fit our definition of cute
Speaker 1: or did our definition Actually I've seen both. I've seen both.
Speaker 1: So it makes sense that like our definition of what's
Speaker 1: cute and what we respond to is cute would be
Speaker 1: based on the average human baby. But you can also
Speaker 1: take an average human baby and tweak, like digitally, um,
Speaker 1: a picture of a baby and tweak it to maximum cuteness.
Speaker 1: And so there's this other idea that Okay, maybe originally
Speaker 1: our idea of cuteness was based on baby features, But
Speaker 1: the cutest babies would um logically get the most response
Speaker 1: and would be the most the most likely yeah, and
Speaker 1: would be the most likely to survive and thrive and
Speaker 1: go on to reproduce. So it is entirely possible that
Speaker 1: we have a speed as a species have gotten cuter
Speaker 1: over the over the eons because of selection of the
Speaker 1: for the cutest babies. Well, and that's been critical to
Speaker 1: our serve bible. Um. You know it's uh when you
Speaker 1: see something like that, when you see a baby chick,
Speaker 1: you your instinct is to pick it up and cradle
Speaker 1: it and make sure you know that a tree branch
Speaker 1: doesn't fall on it, right, And that's the same goes
Speaker 1: for babies. Yeah, because they share a lot of the
Speaker 1: same similarities, the same kin kin kin schema. I wish
Speaker 1: that ken wasn't in there. I wish it was just
Speaker 1: kin den schema. Call it that. Then. I don't want
Speaker 1: to get things wrong all the time, and we do.
Speaker 1: We do. It's usually not purposefully, you know, Okay, But um,
Speaker 1: that same set of traits can apply to other animals.
Speaker 1: It was like you were saying, you know, animals that
Speaker 1: fall into that set of traits appear cute to us,
Speaker 1: and we want to save them, we want to take
Speaker 1: care of them. Um. Like a little baby giraffe has
Speaker 1: huge eyes, its features are kind of small compared to
Speaker 1: a larger adult draft which even adult drafts are awfully cute.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that a baby draft is
Speaker 1: going to get you with is hobbling around trying to
Speaker 1: stand up that first time I hit you with those
Speaker 1: little shaky legs look out. Yeah, and that reminds us
Speaker 1: or reminds some very ancient part of our brain of
Speaker 1: human infant, you know, like developing its motor skill. So
Speaker 1: it seems like it's not like our brains are confused,
Speaker 1: like you're not looking at a baby giraffe, like, look
Speaker 1: at that baby human. I love it. It's just it
Speaker 1: triggers the same part of the brain that seeing a
Speaker 1: human infant does, um, because of that same set of characteristics. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: there was a study I found on mental flaws from
Speaker 1: two thousand nine where scientists reported that, uh, people in
Speaker 1: the study that viewed really cute images of puppies and
Speaker 1: kittens performed better in the game of Operation you know,
Speaker 1: the kids game than people who saw less like that
Speaker 1: saw pictures of grown up dogs and cats. So it
Speaker 1: just innately triggers this care response. It's really really interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so what Lorenz called that innate releasers, that that
Speaker 1: you see a cute baby and the cuteness acts as
Speaker 1: an innate releaser, which triggers a set of inborn instincts
Speaker 1: in every human to take care of that baby, and
Speaker 1: that one apparently hasn't necessarily borne out. But there is
Speaker 1: a lot of or there's an increasing amount of documentation
Speaker 1: about how seeing something cute affects the brain. And I
Speaker 1: propose that we take a commercial break and then come
Speaker 1: back and talk about that afterwards. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: I think I has a commercial break. Sure, I now
Speaker 1: it's in the in the survey, it's like an after
Speaker 1: school special all of a sudden, so um, I think
Speaker 1: before we dive into what you're talking about, I do
Speaker 1: want to mention the wolf puppy thing. I thought it
Speaker 1: was pretty interesting, is that there is an example of
Speaker 1: a co evolved trait with the human brain that triggers
Speaker 1: that cuteness response when you look at wolves wild wolves apparently,
Speaker 1: and these were predogs. Basically, Um, they don't have this
Speaker 1: muscle called the uh. Here we go with some Latin.
Speaker 1: I guess uh leabator angouli oculi. Mettie Alice just made
Speaker 1: a demon appere Oh my god, Um, this muscle they
Speaker 1: don't have in their eyebrows, and apparently that is the
Speaker 1: muscle that can make what we think of as puppy
Speaker 1: dog eyes. Dogs that came later did of all that muscle,
Speaker 1: and then we're bred for it because it made people
Speaker 1: melt inside. Uh so that's why wolves, which is interesting,
Speaker 1: like wolves have that sort of scowl and they can't
Speaker 1: help it. But then I looked at wolf puppy pictures
Speaker 1: and it's pretty cute. But maybe it's not in the eyes.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what it is either,
Speaker 1: but that I think that raises a really good question
Speaker 1: that also kind of points out it like this, this
Speaker 1: research is still very young, and there's contradictory information coming
Speaker 1: in and a lot of it is just based on
Speaker 1: intuition and that kind of thing. But there are, like
Speaker 1: you said, there's that there are people walking around who think,
Speaker 1: like that baby lizard is super cute. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like it it's not entirely universal, and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe those wolf puppies have some other traits that have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the eyes that that are hijacking
Speaker 1: your brain. The point that stands out to me is
Speaker 1: that that that caregiving instinct that Lorenz pointed out, or
Speaker 1: whatever whatever weird brain pathway we have, um, that's triggered
Speaker 1: by seeing something cute, is that it extends beyond humans.
Speaker 1: And I think that that kind of that that makes
Speaker 1: humanity as a species like that much greater in my opinion,
Speaker 1: that like that caregiving impulse can extend beyond humans. And
Speaker 1: I mean that explains pets right there. Like, I don't
Speaker 1: think we would have pets if that wasn't true, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, we'd have like guard dogs or something still,
Speaker 1: but you know, not a pet. There would be German shepherds.
Speaker 1: There'd be nothing but and they'd all be mean as
Speaker 1: as snakes. And we probably have snakes too. That rode
Speaker 1: the German shepherds. They still wouldn't be pets. Baby snakes
Speaker 1: not so cute. There's also that weird thing where something
Speaker 1: is so ugly it's cute as a young thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's a Japanese term. We'll talk about kawaie later.
Speaker 1: But there's something called chemo kawaii, which is called gross cute. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they they've they've got it. That's something they're like the Germans,
Speaker 1: but further east, they have like a name and a
Speaker 1: term in idea for everything. You know. All right, we'll
Speaker 1: put a pin in that because we did promise the
Speaker 1: science of cute. So we're gonna have to look at um,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to look at the brain and actually
Speaker 1: what's going on there. And they've done that of course. UM.
Speaker 1: They've put people in the Wonder machine and they have
Speaker 1: shown people pictures of baby faces to see what lights up.
Speaker 1: And when that happens, you get a really strong immediate
Speaker 1: response and what's called the orbitofrontal cortex, which is where
Speaker 1: we regulate our emotions and our pleasure, and it's a
Speaker 1: really really fast response, um one seven of a second. Um.
Speaker 1: It doesn't take long when you see that baby or
Speaker 1: that puppy or whatever you don't it doesn't take you
Speaker 1: long to to immediately think, I need to care for
Speaker 1: that thing and hold that thing. Yeah, Because so that
Speaker 1: orbitofrontal cortex UM apparently has something to do with the
Speaker 1: reward system. So your attention is captured very quickly and
Speaker 1: you get a little burst of of pleasure from seeing
Speaker 1: that that cute baby. And then there's another thing too
Speaker 1: that that that came out of that two thousand nine
Speaker 1: study using operation that all of a sudden, you're attention
Speaker 1: is very much focused and you can complete tasks um
Speaker 1: much better or at least remarkably better. Um, then you
Speaker 1: could without seeing something cute. So it really does suggest
Speaker 1: we have this inborn pathway to respond to something cute
Speaker 1: in a pleasurable way with warm feelings. Um, that trigger
Speaker 1: an ability a greater or more focused ability to do
Speaker 1: something like, for example, care for or feed a baby
Speaker 1: or that kind of thing that's that seems to be
Speaker 1: borne out like Lawrence's innate release, or seems to be
Speaker 1: being discovered um by neurology right now. Which is interesting though,
Speaker 1: because caring for a baby is not, in my experience,
Speaker 1: something you need that kind of focus for. It's not
Speaker 1: like putting together a little model house with tiny pieces
Speaker 1: of furniture. Um, it's just like keep this thing alive. Right,
Speaker 1: But maybe maybe that's like, um, rather than being like,
Speaker 1: oh you know, I think i'll I'd rather break the
Speaker 1: law of the law and instead and you just stop
Speaker 1: feeding the baby leaves you know what I'm saying, Like
Speaker 1: your your attention to the task at hand. He's a
Speaker 1: little more focused, so you're less distracted. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: kind of focus. Sure. Yeah, Luckily it doesn't take much
Speaker 1: brains because it's a lot of non smart parents out there.
Speaker 1: That is true. Um So in that response, that speedy
Speaker 1: response in the orbitofrontal cortex when you see that baby,
Speaker 1: men and women both have that same spike. But I
Speaker 1: think women report stronger caregiving, which they chalk up to
Speaker 1: just gender roles basically and not necessarily anything to do
Speaker 1: with the brain itself. Yeah, because the same areas light
Speaker 1: up for men and women, I guess to the same degree.
Speaker 1: It's just self reported as different, right right. And then
Speaker 1: apparently also like this, this is not just um parents
Speaker 1: who experienced this, like a human being will or a
Speaker 1: typical human being will experience this. Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: the thing where like, as an adoptive parent, you know
Speaker 1: this is uh, my daughter is not my seed. Um,
Speaker 1: but I can't piplical it. Um but I can't like
Speaker 1: I have nothing to base it on. But I can't
Speaker 1: imagine a stronger connection or a stronger instinct to care
Speaker 1: give and um so it's a It's an important trait
Speaker 1: clearly because like you've seen movies where uh, people find
Speaker 1: like a baby like abandoned by the dumpster and that
Speaker 1: you know, you run out and you know, I suppose
Speaker 1: some people might just say call it in and say Hey,
Speaker 1: there's a baby over here. I'm not going near it,
Speaker 1: but a humans inclination is to run over and pick
Speaker 1: that baby up and wrap it up in something warm
Speaker 1: and then maybe call the cops or whatever. Right, and
Speaker 1: like you said, like run over there like that, like
Speaker 1: it an urgent thing that that your brain would just
Speaker 1: be like get over there, right, the helpless thing out
Speaker 1: there by a dumpster, let's go get it. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: that apparently would come probably more from um the baby's cry,
Speaker 1: which I guess also a nights like the same kind
Speaker 1: of um pathway as cuteness does, but it's a different
Speaker 1: it's slightly different. There's not necessarily a reward. It's more
Speaker 1: like urgency. And they call that a biological siren, which
Speaker 1: which would you know, get you over there really quickly,
Speaker 1: But it's not necessarily because you saw you know, you
Speaker 1: you thought about how cute the baby is in those
Speaker 1: swaddling clothes. Right. Uh. Sound is definitely important. Like that
Speaker 1: same study, if you hear babies laughter or even as
Speaker 1: the smell of a baby, you your brain lights up
Speaker 1: in the same way. Yeah. So like that, we're presented
Speaker 1: with the entire cute package of everything that's great about babies, sounds, smell.
Speaker 1: They are really deeply manipulative. I think is is what
Speaker 1: you're meant to take away from this episode. They are
Speaker 1: just tiny little monsters saying like, take care of me
Speaker 1: for eighteen years. That's right, and possibly beyond. If I'm
Speaker 1: gen X exactly, it was a gen X or millennials.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel like there were plenty of
Speaker 1: gen xers that lived in the Bay, right, you're totally right,
Speaker 1: or maybe that's every generation, but we weren't coddled as much.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, you're gonna get us canceled the boy. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: So let's move on from that. Oh wait, here's another thing.
Speaker 1: And this is the satisfinding Ever, when they did the study,
Speaker 1: um that that brain activity was diminished when they were
Speaker 1: shown baby faces that were had some sort of facial disruption,
Speaker 1: like a cleft palate. And that is really one of
Speaker 1: the saddest things you can imagine hearing. Yeah, because I
Speaker 1: mean that would that would account for you know what
Speaker 1: I was talking about earlier about how cuteness is selected
Speaker 1: for that there's this like by no one's fault of
Speaker 1: their own, but just through you know, the evolutionary process
Speaker 1: of these these neural connections that were born that are
Speaker 1: ready to make like wanting to respond to something cute.
Speaker 1: If you're presented with something that doesn't quite line up
Speaker 1: with that king Kin schema, Um, that baby is going
Speaker 1: to have a much harder time getting that same response
Speaker 1: from from somebody than just a traditionally cute baby. Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's extraordinarily sad. I think we need to do
Speaker 1: an episode on cleft palates too. That that stood out
Speaker 1: to me that we haven't done that yet. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: even worse than you know, in ancient times, those babies
Speaker 1: would be walked out to the woods and left, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, you know. Um, Carl Lawrence apparently said that
Speaker 1: the Quby doll, you know, our cup mayonnaise, So the
Speaker 1: doll that that's based on if you take a look
Speaker 1: at its face, Um, that in Lawrence's opinion, that was
Speaker 1: the maximum exaggeration that you could reach of Kinkin schema
Speaker 1: before violating it, and that afterward what was beyond it
Speaker 1: was that wasn't coined at the time, but what he
Speaker 1: was talking about was basically an uncanny valley like there's
Speaker 1: your brain would start to be like, wait, there's something,
Speaker 1: so thing is somewhat out of order here. UM, So
Speaker 1: it's weird. There's like a really apparently there's a set
Speaker 1: a package of traits that make up what is considered cute,
Speaker 1: and straying outside of that, UM just kind of violates
Speaker 1: it in some weird way. It violates like this this
Speaker 1: pathway that we're we seem to be pre programmed to have.
Speaker 1: I didn't know mayonnaise was going to make an appearance.
Speaker 1: I I did because I saw the cuteie thing, But
Speaker 1: before that I had no idea either. So cuteness is
Speaker 1: going to activate other parts of the brain. It's just
Speaker 1: not that superspeedy response that you get in the orbitofrontal cortex. UM.
Speaker 1: So if you're a parent and you have a brain, UM,
Speaker 1: you're gonna go undergo a really kind of slow change. UM.
Speaker 1: As you parent and as you take care of that baby,
Speaker 1: in bond with that baby, as they go into infancy. UM,
Speaker 1: you're gonna still have that trigger of cuteness, but it's
Speaker 1: just going to be a slower response and more complex
Speaker 1: as far as your actual brain activity goes. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: supposedly that co evolves with the cuteness of a baby,
Speaker 1: like a newborn baby is just that. But like you
Speaker 1: look at a baby some six months that same baby, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to admit, it's pretty infrequent for a baby
Speaker 1: to be cute right out of the womb. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean generally they're little alien lizard type creatures. Sure, but
Speaker 1: wait six months, and that same baby is going to
Speaker 1: look awfully cute. So and within right, and within that
Speaker 1: six months, um, you're going to have developed more sophisticated responses,
Speaker 1: caretaking responses to that baby's cuteness. Um, it's pretty interesting
Speaker 1: that like they both start to gel around the same time,
Speaker 1: the babies start to hit pique cuteness and the caregiving
Speaker 1: stuff becomes more and more sophisticated. It goes from I
Speaker 1: need to keep this baby alive to um, you know
Speaker 1: what college is this baby? I'm gonna get this baby
Speaker 1: through college kind of stuff. You start thinking about that, right,
Speaker 1: and that sort of brings back what we talked about
Speaker 1: earlier as UM, like that that empathetic, compassionate response when
Speaker 1: it's not even your child, Yes, when it's not even
Speaker 1: from the same species. And and like you were saying,
Speaker 1: you know, people tend to rate um, the species that
Speaker 1: are most altricial as the cutest because they need the
Speaker 1: most help. So that pathway can be hijacked by humans,
Speaker 1: human babies and other species as well, and by people
Speaker 1: who are trying to sell you stuff. As we'll see.
Speaker 1: That's very true. Break, Yes, all right, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: your break and talk about qute aggression, something that we're
Speaker 1: pretty familiar with right after this. All right, So I've
Speaker 1: talked before in the past about my wife Emily, and uh,
Speaker 1: when she sees puppies and babies and other cute little things,
Speaker 1: she uh, she says stuff like I want to I
Speaker 1: want to punch that baby in the face. I want
Speaker 1: to squeeze the life out of it. I want to
Speaker 1: I want to eat that puppy. Like some things that
Speaker 1: sound genuinely horrific, Maybe not, I want to punch that
Speaker 1: baby in the face. That's a different I've seen that somewhere,
Speaker 1: but it's a thing, and it's not just her, it's
Speaker 1: an actual thing. It's called cute aggression. When you see
Speaker 1: something and you say, you know, I want to put
Speaker 1: that puppy on a plate and eat it, which is,
Speaker 1: like you said, it's very weird when you step back
Speaker 1: and think about it, um, and it actually it's of
Speaker 1: a very recent um investigation, like I think two thirteen
Speaker 1: is the earliest I saw um. And one of the
Speaker 1: people who are leading the charge into studying qute aggression
Speaker 1: is a Clemson psychologist named Oriana aragon Um, and she
Speaker 1: and some of her colleagues have really kind of are
Speaker 1: are are establishing this field of cute aggression. And the
Speaker 1: reason why aragon is a pretty good social psychologist to
Speaker 1: be investigating this is because her specialty is dimorphous expressions,
Speaker 1: which is contradictory emotional indicators that don't really seem to
Speaker 1: go together, but do because it's just so common, like
Speaker 1: tears of joy um or nervous laughter, that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: And it seems that que aggression kind of falls under
Speaker 1: that same umbrella. Yeah, and it's interesting because you say, sure, great,
Speaker 1: qute aggression. We've got a name for it that doesn't
Speaker 1: really explain it though, and it's explained kind of like
Speaker 1: nervous laughter or tears of joy. It may be a
Speaker 1: way of regulating something that's just too overwhelming emotionally. So
Speaker 1: when they study qute aggression, they show people the cutest
Speaker 1: pictures of the cutest things, see how the brain responds
Speaker 1: and people who have the really biggest cute aggressive response, UM,
Speaker 1: their brains are lighting up, but your reward system is
Speaker 1: also lighting up at the same time, right, but it's
Speaker 1: like an overwhelming reward response, like you're just uh, it's intolerable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so the idea is that your brain brings you
Speaker 1: down from that um by implementing like a not complimentary
Speaker 1: what's the opposite of complimentary m you're a big jerk,
Speaker 1: that kind of UM, that kind of emotion like anger
Speaker 1: or aggression or hostility or something like that, to balance
Speaker 1: it out and to bring you back down. Because it
Speaker 1: makes sense that if you were just sitting there experiencing
Speaker 1: overwhelming UM cute overload like you would, you might not
Speaker 1: ever get around defeating that baby. You might just be
Speaker 1: sitting there like with your tongue hanging out the side
Speaker 1: of your mouth, drooling. Yeah. It's interesting because like a
Speaker 1: lot of times, and I've heard a lot of other
Speaker 1: people say this, but like Emily will say like I
Speaker 1: just want to squeeze that baby, and that's followed up
Speaker 1: with I can't even take it, Like I just can't
Speaker 1: even take it with this cuteness, Like that's that's literally true,
Speaker 1: Like your brain can't even take it. So I thought
Speaker 1: it was cute. Aragon Um came up with a way
Speaker 1: to measure cute aggression UM by using bubble wrap. This
Speaker 1: I didn't quite understand this. She would give um bubble
Speaker 1: wrap two people and show them different pictures, and the
Speaker 1: pictures that rated the highest in cuteness UM evoked or
Speaker 1: led to the largest number of bubbles pops. So the
Speaker 1: idea is like, if you see something cute, pop bubbles
Speaker 1: or just like here, hold this, and you just find
Speaker 1: yourself popping them. I don't know. I don't know that.
Speaker 1: I don't know actually to tell you the truth, UM,
Speaker 1: I think yeah. I think it's more it's meant to
Speaker 1: be like an unconscious thing, Like you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: be like, well, this is an eighty bubble kitty, you know,
Speaker 1: nothing like that. Or it's just like you look down
Speaker 1: you're like, oh my god, there's no more bubbles left
Speaker 1: this that that cat was so cute kind of thing. UM.
Speaker 1: I saw another explanation for Q diggression in that it's
Speaker 1: a response to a frustrated desire for caregiving. So where um,
Speaker 1: where you want to go punch that baby in the face.
Speaker 1: But you know, you'll spend a significant amount of time
Speaker 1: in jail if you actually do that, right, Like, that's
Speaker 1: that's where that would come a from like like that,
Speaker 1: you can't do that. It's not your baby to go
Speaker 1: snug goal and cuddle and take care of you can't.
Speaker 1: You have to do it from a far exactly, So
Speaker 1: you have to do it from afar. So it it
Speaker 1: it comes out in this mixture of cute response and
Speaker 1: aggression or aggressive words or uh you know that kind
Speaker 1: of thing well, and that also kind of dovetails with
Speaker 1: the cute sadness, which is I guess Aragon coined that
Speaker 1: term as well. Is where um, you see a puppy
Speaker 1: in a window and you go oh, no or ah
Speaker 1: or make a frowny face. That's when you see a
Speaker 1: lot when you see something really cute. And her theory
Speaker 1: is that kind of like what you're just saying, like
Speaker 1: that puppy is is uh is in the crate at
Speaker 1: the adoption place and you can't get to it, or
Speaker 1: it's just walking down the street with somebody and you're
Speaker 1: driving your car and you can't get to it. So
Speaker 1: you're expressing a kind of a frustration that you can't
Speaker 1: get out of the car and squeeze the puppy, right,
Speaker 1: so you have to squeeze your sphincter instead. But I
Speaker 1: guess it comes out as disappointment though, yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's it would seem to be frustrated, a response to
Speaker 1: frustrated attempts at caregiving or a frustrated desire to caregive
Speaker 1: because you see something cute and your caregiving instinct is
Speaker 1: triggered or whatever you want to call it if you
Speaker 1: don't don't agree with instinct, but there's nothing you can
Speaker 1: do about it because you're driving and that things going
Speaker 1: the other way, so you can't do anything to to
Speaker 1: take care of it. So you have to get that
Speaker 1: out somehow. And it seems like anger and aggression is
Speaker 1: a good way for it to make it subside quickly.
Speaker 1: But again again I really want to point out here
Speaker 1: this is this is intuitive stuff. This is not stuff
Speaker 1: where it's like this study backs the sub and this
Speaker 1: study backs this up. From what I've seen, every single
Speaker 1: study in cuteness and cute aggression, uh, involves about a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty college undergrads as your your your study population,
Speaker 1: and they're popping bubble wrap and stuff like that like,
Speaker 1: it's still very early in its research, but it does
Speaker 1: make a lot of sense, you know, But that doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean that's that's accurate. Just take that and take
Speaker 1: that with a grain of salt whatever that means. And
Speaker 1: it's also, um, I'm not knocking the study, but it's
Speaker 1: also you know, let's be honest, it's not the most
Speaker 1: important thing in the world. No, No, it's like interesting
Speaker 1: to understand. It makes for good reading on an internet article,
Speaker 1: but uh, it's not driving Like, it's not solving a problem,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. I suddenly feel like we're
Speaker 1: standing in the middle of a vast glass house and
Speaker 1: we have rocks in our hands right now. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: I think it's fun to talk about. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: what makes I mean, this is perfect podcast spodder for sure. Um,
Speaker 1: But like I'm curious that this could be applied at all.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think maybe it's just one of
Speaker 1: those things where it's like, now we understand that it's documented,
Speaker 1: it's understood, so we understand humans a little more, and
Speaker 1: then maybe it'll open some door to some other thing
Speaker 1: that we realize was connected that. You know that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I totally agree with what you're saying. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I think you've pulled me any other direction. Nobel prize,
Speaker 1: oh good God to send it their way. Good. So
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier about using the stuff to sell things,
Speaker 1: and that is for sure true. Um, you can't. I mean,
Speaker 1: you look at any Pixar or Disney cartoon or anime. Certainly, Um,
Speaker 1: you're gonna see round babies and you're gonna see huge eyes.
Speaker 1: When you see pamphlets that are trying to sell stuff
Speaker 1: or or try to get you to donate to an
Speaker 1: animal cause or a children's foundation. Um, they're probably gonna
Speaker 1: put a baby or a puppy on that cover that
Speaker 1: has the biggest, roundest face and eyes. It's manipulative, Um,
Speaker 1: but used for good generally. Yeah, yeah, totally. It's almost
Speaker 1: like um, using music in the background of an ad,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's purposefully hijacking a very ancient neural
Speaker 1: pathway that basically all humans have to get an emotional
Speaker 1: response out of you, a positive emotional response. And it
Speaker 1: might have nothing to do with with what they're trying
Speaker 1: to sell, but you're you're now associating pleasurable, warm feeling
Speaker 1: with you know, Mr Sparkle dishwashing detergent, you know when
Speaker 1: really it's just a a joint venture of Matsumura Fish
Speaker 1: Works and Tomorrow Heavy Manufacturing concern. Um. Like when they've
Speaker 1: done um, they've done studies and like anti smoking campaigns
Speaker 1: for teenagers, and they respond more to cartoon characters that
Speaker 1: are cute, which sounds a lot like Joe Campbell. If
Speaker 1: you ask me, it's like the opposite. That's true. Um,
Speaker 1: but it does make sense like a teens might respond
Speaker 1: to a list here is like a penguin and a
Speaker 1: jacket or a polar bear. Then you know some adult
Speaker 1: human like pointing their finger at you like John, can
Speaker 1: you imagine to the teens don't smoke? Right? So? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it also makes you think, like you know, since so
Speaker 1: many like cute toys, or so many toys are cute. Um,
Speaker 1: when you're buying like a plush animal has, are you
Speaker 1: responding almost in like an insane way to your cute
Speaker 1: caregiving response? Just being manipulated and like you're going to
Speaker 1: take that stuff to animal home and and and give
Speaker 1: it care because it's just been activated in you? Is
Speaker 1: that really? Is that? That seems to be what's going
Speaker 1: on when you when you're when you buy like a
Speaker 1: toy like that. That's interesting because then if you know,
Speaker 1: if you see people walking around like that, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: well you've you've just been manipulated. Congratulations kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But also you can make the case to um. And
Speaker 1: I read a guy uh something by a guy named
Speaker 1: Gary Jenosco who is the Canada Research Chair and Techno
Speaker 1: Culture at lake Head University in thunder Bay, Ontario, and
Speaker 1: he argues that UM that same thing that the commodification
Speaker 1: of cute, uh say, like by Disney. He also argues
Speaker 1: that National Geographic Magazine was big into getting people in
Speaker 1: involved in caring about animals and nature. They really use cuteness,
Speaker 1: especially in like the fifties and sixties. I guess um
Speaker 1: that it forms our understanding of things in a very
Speaker 1: specific way, which is this thing is cute. It's like
Speaker 1: a toy to me. I want to pick it up
Speaker 1: and carry it around and love it and hug on it.
Speaker 1: But in doing that you really miss out on a
Speaker 1: lot of the um the individual um personality of whatever
Speaker 1: that animal is. Like you like you trade respect for infantalism,
Speaker 1: right and like that. That that really stood out to
Speaker 1: me because I have to remind myself that Momo is
Speaker 1: like this sncient individual entity who deserves respect and to
Speaker 1: be treated with respect. I just picked up any time
Speaker 1: she you know, she looks at me a certain way
Speaker 1: and it sets off my cuteness response. Like I've really
Speaker 1: had to grapple with that. And luckily, you mean's like
Speaker 1: really aware of that because she hasn't She's always been
Speaker 1: a very small person and she us got get picked
Speaker 1: up all the time, so she's like identifies with Mama
Speaker 1: on that level. Um, And it's been like really an
Speaker 1: exercise and restraint. Sometimes it's just be like, no, I've
Speaker 1: just got to treat Mama like she doesn't want to
Speaker 1: be picked up right now kind of thing. You know.
Speaker 1: But I thought Canascar Jenascar really made a good point
Speaker 1: that we we miss a lot of like what makes
Speaker 1: an animal and animal in in favor of just seeing
Speaker 1: it as something cute and a kind of a plaything
Speaker 1: in a way. Yeah, and if like there's no clear
Speaker 1: reminder that, um, you know, I've always had dogs and
Speaker 1: multiple dogs and love dogs, but when you see a
Speaker 1: dog like you know, go after a squirrel and catch
Speaker 1: it and eat it or something, that these are the
Speaker 1: reminders like these are these are animals, you know, like
Speaker 1: the same cute dog will also you know, eat poop
Speaker 1: out of it's a but if it could right or
Speaker 1: eat your face if you died on the couch and
Speaker 1: it was locked in the house with in a second. Sure, Um,
Speaker 1: so we probably shouldn't finish until we talk about kauaie culture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the Japanese culture that is um well, this
Speaker 1: says it best. Maybe the greatest pop culture expression of cute.
Speaker 1: You think Pikachu think um like pop singers dressed as
Speaker 1: a little sort of pigtailed schoolgirls. Uh. It's it's a
Speaker 1: very very big trend in Japan. It's huge, Like everybody
Speaker 1: has a cute mascot, Hello kiddies everywhere. It's just enormous.
Speaker 1: And apparently it kind of like grew and evolved and
Speaker 1: morphed over time, starting with this um student protest movement
Speaker 1: in the sixties, where like the Japanese kids like um
Speaker 1: just to sided, they didn't want to go to class anymore.
Speaker 1: They sat around and read manga comic books instead and
Speaker 1: kind of regress to back to childhood. And then that
Speaker 1: kind of developed in the seventies into a trend for
Speaker 1: cute see bubbly handwriting that led to Hello Kitty, and
Speaker 1: then weirdly, it also made an appearance um as Uh
Speaker 1: what is it Burrico women, which is very childlike. Um
Speaker 1: women who adopted this this kind of demeanor UM two
Speaker 1: number one, uh cut off any sense of threat that
Speaker 1: they presented when they entered the workforce, but also to
Speaker 1: kind of keep um unwanted advances from their male colleagues.
Speaker 1: At Bay two, they entered the workforce as if they
Speaker 1: were young kids, little girls, giggly and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. And this is like a persona that they
Speaker 1: adopted that eventually became this trend, this cuteness trend that's
Speaker 1: like everywhere in Japan. I never thought about the bubble letters.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting because I've always sort of wondered, like
Speaker 1: why elementary school girls. It seems like I would write
Speaker 1: in those big, juicy round letters. Yeah, it makes sense,
Speaker 1: it does. But that was apparently where Hawaii culture came
Speaker 1: from originally as a handwriting thing. Interesting. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: curious here at the end, I was like, has science
Speaker 1: proven what the cutest animals are? And I did find
Speaker 1: something from list Verse and Jonathan Cantor the top ten
Speaker 1: cutest animals in the world, according to science. But I
Speaker 1: see nothing in the article about how science proved this,
Speaker 1: literally nothing, but I figured i'd read it just for frenzies.
Speaker 1: Number ten is most baby mammals, okay. Number nine is
Speaker 1: the slow Loris. You ever see those things? You should
Speaker 1: look at some of these. In fact, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and text you number one right now because and
Speaker 1: I guess i'll just send it to you and are
Speaker 1: since she's on our most recent thread, she'll be like,
Speaker 1: what the heck is this all right? Coming your way? So?
Speaker 1: Number eight is the mere cat, which I think mere
Speaker 1: cancelok a little sinister personally. Yeah, I can see that
Speaker 1: because of the like there they got the bandit masks on. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: Number seven is the koala. Yeah, did you just Lauras
Speaker 1: looks like, no, that's not a Lauras that I sent you.
Speaker 1: Are you looking at Laris? Well? What is this what
Speaker 1: I sent you? We'll just put a pen in. It's
Speaker 1: number one, okay, Yeah, I can see that. Number six
Speaker 1: is the Flapjack and Dumbo octopode. Okay, um, piglets. Number
Speaker 1: five match the fennic fox. Number four, that's the fox
Speaker 1: with those huge ears and make those great sounds. The
Speaker 1: red pandas number three, the panda bear, the white panda,
Speaker 1: black and white pant is nowhere on this list. Weird,
Speaker 1: this guy's way off. This must have been a list
Speaker 1: from Jimmy Science, his roommate. According to Jimmy Science, I
Speaker 1: think you mean James B. Science, number two with sea
Speaker 1: otters and then number one. I don't know how I've
Speaker 1: lived my whole life without knowing that this thing existed.
Speaker 1: But the quoca q u o k k A from Australia.
Speaker 1: It's a small marsupial uh same family as a kangaroo,
Speaker 1: apparently in southwestern Australia. And that picture I sent you,
Speaker 1: my friend, just google smiling quoca and you'll see this
Speaker 1: one picture of this quoca literally jumping hands out, smiling
Speaker 1: at the camera lens like give me a hug, Like,
Speaker 1: give me a hug. This is and I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: n you know, they said it's because they look like
Speaker 1: they're smiling. Obviously is one of the big reasons. But
Speaker 1: almost every picture you look at a quoca, it's got
Speaker 1: this little smile. It's unbelievable. Hey, I have to say,
Speaker 1: based on the screenshot you you need to charge your
Speaker 1: phone soon. Uh yeah, and that was even earlier, So
Speaker 1: I get that same stress because I'm I'm generally at
Speaker 1: least guy. Yeah, and so when I see people do
Speaker 1: screenshots and as that read, yeah, boy, I can't even
Speaker 1: take it so um to finish up, chuck that the
Speaker 1: converse of what you're talking about the cutest animals, um,
Speaker 1: the fact that they exist also kind of implies that
Speaker 1: there are non cute animals that exist and that they're
Speaker 1: less likely to get our attention. Um. And as a result,
Speaker 1: there is a kind of tongue in cheek. But I
Speaker 1: also get the impression kind of serious group called the
Speaker 1: Ugly Animal Preservation Society whose mascot is the blob Fish,
Speaker 1: which makes a lot of sense, and their slogan is
Speaker 1: we can't all be pandas I love that. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: they're looking out for the ugly animals that we're going
Speaker 1: to wipe out because they're not cute. Well, I know
Speaker 1: that is a big deal when it comes to conservation,
Speaker 1: is that that people can conservations have a much harder
Speaker 1: time getting money and stuff. And we talked about it
Speaker 1: in our Zoos episode. Yeah, like that's why they lead
Speaker 1: with giraffes and elephants and stuff like that. Was that
Speaker 1: the episode? I know we talked about it before and
Speaker 1: they were like, look, man, just leave us alone. This
Speaker 1: is the important stuff because it saves the other stuff. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: That blobfish that looks like man, yeah, ugly cute maybe yeah,
Speaker 1: chemo kawaii. If kawaii sounds familiar, that's probably because you
Speaker 1: heard it at the very beginning of the Quin Stefani
Speaker 1: song Haull of back Girl, where she sees a bunch
Speaker 1: of hard juku girls in Japan and goes, kawai nice.
Speaker 1: That blobfish look like look like it's constantly saying okay,
Speaker 1: I know they shouldn't call it that or fish. The
Speaker 1: blobfish definitely works sooner man um, Well, since we have
Speaker 1: wrapped it up with the old blobfish, if you want
Speaker 1: to know more about the science of cute, just start
Speaker 1: looking at cute pictures of the coo ooka. Sure, that's
Speaker 1: a great place to start. And since Chuck said sure,
Speaker 1: that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this. I'm getting called out here and it's something
Speaker 1: I haven't thought about. I got called out by a
Speaker 1: couple of people for different reasons for saying, uh, this
Speaker 1: phrase you know unless you live under a rock that
Speaker 1: you know blank. One person said, Hey, that just makes
Speaker 1: me feel dumb because I didn't know about one of
Speaker 1: these things. Sure, I think that's the point, right, that's
Speaker 1: your intent. No, I don't want to make anyone to
Speaker 1: feel bad, but this is a different kind of response,
Speaker 1: and uh, well worth reading. Hey, guys, making my way
Speaker 1: through a backlog log of episodes, and I noticed the
Speaker 1: thing that seems to pop up from time to time
Speaker 1: and your descriptions of popular culture and products like hang
Speaker 1: gliding at a sketch and Rubik's Cube. You make comments
Speaker 1: like and if you don't know what one of these
Speaker 1: is or looks like, get out from under your rock
Speaker 1: and go look up a picture. Uh, someone who has
Speaker 1: been blind since birth? Though, my problem isn't that I've
Speaker 1: been living under a rock, but rather the pictures to
Speaker 1: me are worth zero words. Yeah, I really got me good.
Speaker 1: I grew up in the eighties, so everyone had a
Speaker 1: Rubik's Cube, and I played with my fair share of them,
Speaker 1: even though I couldn't solve them for many things in life. Though,
Speaker 1: if I haven't physically touched it or had it described
Speaker 1: to me. I only have the faintest idea of what
Speaker 1: it looks like. In fact, I was a music music
Speaker 1: education major in college, and it wasn't until my sophomore
Speaker 1: year in age nineteen that I touched a brass instrument
Speaker 1: for the very first time. Uh, the French horn still
Speaker 1: fascinates me. I've enjoyed listening to your show for years,
Speaker 1: and I've learned lots of visual information from you, from
Speaker 1: what jiraffes looked like to fashion choices of punk rockers.
Speaker 1: I wanted to make you aware of this though. You
Speaker 1: can help people who can't look at pictures, whether uh,
Speaker 1: we're blind or whether we're on the road driving in
Speaker 1: a truck and we don't want to pull out our
Speaker 1: phones to look at pictures. Thanks for years of learning
Speaker 1: and laughter. Appreciate the work warmly, Ryan for Minneapolis and
Speaker 1: Ryan in I have nothing to say but great point,
Speaker 1: and I'll do better. Very nice, Chuck. I don't think
Speaker 1: there's anything else you could say. You know why, because
Speaker 1: you're a good person and jerk. That's right. And now
Speaker 1: I will try and describe things to the best of
Speaker 1: my ability, which might not be great but I think
Speaker 1: you did a good job with the kawaka description. Smiling
Speaker 1: wrote it. Yeah, it looks like it's smiling. That's all
Speaker 1: you need to know that. Um, well, if you want
Speaker 1: to take a chuck or meat a task, that's There's
Speaker 1: not a lot of sport in that. But if you
Speaker 1: want to do it anyway, that's fine. You can send
Speaker 1: it to his via email, wrap it up and send
Speaker 1: it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio for more podcasts for my heart Radio because it
Speaker 1: the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.